


if not tomorrow, perhaps the day after

by sulfuric



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Choose Your Own Adventure, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Groundhog Day, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Interactive Fiction, Love Confessions, M/M, Reader-Interactive, Time Loop, also the ending is mmm not happy. you've been warned babes, not a big part or graphic! but tagging to b safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 39
Words: 100,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: Between killing a guy, fighting a demon clown, and losing the only person he’s ever loved, Richie’s pretty sure he just had the worst day of his life. Good thing he gets to relive it over, and over, and over again! The universe may be a sick fuck, but at least it’s giving him the chance (many chances) to make it right and get Eddie where he belongs. Or is it?A choose your own adventure: the universe needs your help, and so does Richie—make the right choices and break the loop so tomorrow can come.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 187
Kudos: 150





	1. Instructions

**Author's Note:**

> oh hi!!!!! welcome, thanks for bein here!!!! some housekeeping before we embark on our journey together:
> 
> the total word count may seem daunting but! keep in mind that that encompasses every single pathway/loop in this fic. i did some math and on average, it should take you 42.6k to read this fic if you go all the way through without doubling back to try out every choice! also the shortest possible pathway is 33.0k and the longest is 52.4k so. do with that what you will.
> 
> also, this fic is dedicated to the absolutely wonderful motherfucker that is my former roommate (rip)/best friend lauren!!!! homegirl doesn’t even CARE about this clown shit but she sat on the couch w me for like hours everyday and very enthusiastically helped me figure out this thing. this fic would be incredibly lame without her so everyone take a minute to say fuck yeah we love u lauren!!!! fuck yeah we love u lauren!!!!!!
> 
> triggers will be tagged appropriately in each chapter summary so please read carefully and take care! general, fic-wide warning for canon-typical violence, homophobia, some suicidal thoughts, a lot of death, and general very sad times. but i promise there are happy times, too. the epic highs and lows, if you will. highs: like so many love confession scenes. lows: homeboy stuck in a time loop with no coping skills. yikers.
> 
> i encourage yall to scream in the comments if u wish! or perhaps come yell along with me on [tumblr](https://losersclub3000.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/losersclub3000) where i will be hanging out!! i would love to hear about what choices u all make for richie and why!!! also, there’s a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2G97ImiDeaGug6GlkwXTXa) if you’re into that kind of thing! mwah! i hope u enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

Oh, hey there. Glad you made it. Here’s the deal: Eddie’s going to die. He was always going to die. This seems to be inevitable. 

Richie doesn’t give a fuck about inevitable. 

Richie can’t accept Eddie dying. He won’t accept Eddie dying. 

None of this has happened yet, but we get a little sneak peek. Yes, I’m including you in that—your role is very important in all of this. You’re the one that’s going to figure it out. What that means, exactly, is up to you.

And whatever it means, he’s going to need your help.

Here’s how it works: Richie is going to relive the worst day of his life as many times as it takes for you to figure it out. He’s going to have a lot of choices. You’ll get to nudge him in whichever direction you wish on some of those choices. When it’s time for that, you’ll see some text in bold. That’s just for you and me, by the way—our little thing. Richie doesn’t need to know. Anyway. When you get to the bolded text, you’ll see some options. Your job is to click on the option you’d like to see Richie explore.

Now, please, don’t go touching the chapter buttons. It’s not going to be very productive. It will probably be very confusing, and it will probably end terribly for both you and Richie. No one wants that. I’ve gone ahead and made everything easy for you, so don’t go venturing off past that nice bold text. Some things are not for you to know.

Other than that, try to have fun. Don’t be too hard on yourself if things go sideways for our friend Richie. Realize that the scope of things you can control is not as wide as you might think. Realize that your choices are life and death, anyway. 

Remember that you’ve seen some of this before. You can skip it, if you want, but you might miss something there. It’s only a grave you’re digging. Does it matter whose?

**Are you ready to start?**

**>[Yes.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59183917#workskin)**

**> Too bad, it's time.**


	2. dress rehearsal...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

_You’re going to die_

_in your best friend’s arms._

_And you play along because it’s funny, because it’s written down,_

_you’ve memorized it,_

_it’s all you know._

_I say the phrases that keep it all going,_

_and everybody plays along._

_—Richard Siken, Planet of Love_

Let’s start from the very beginning.

The first time Richie wakes up after the Jade, he has the worst hangover of his fucking life. It’s way too early, enough that the sun still hasn’t risen, the window of Richie’s room a rectangle of pale indigo blue behind the sheer curtains. For a second he forgets where he is, a shiver of panic going through him at the unfamiliarity of the room coming into focus around him, but then his head starts pounding and it all comes back.

 _Right,_ he’s in fucking Derry. He has to go off and fight the demon clown from his childhood, or else he will most certainly die a horrible, painful death. Nothing says _welcome home!_ like confronting your most repressed traumas.

He’s halfway to burying his head under his pillow and trying to get some more sleep when he hears the muffled sound of voices coming from downstairs. Oh, yeah. Mike wanted them to get up absurdly early—after going to bed absurdly late—to get a jump on the day. Lots to do, apparently. Rituals to prepare, or whatever the fuck. Richie groans and commits himself to looking only half as horrible as he feels, which, objectively, is still pretty horrible.

He’s sure no one will give a shit. 

Richie ends up being the last one up, the rest of them assembled in the sitting area by the bar and waiting expectantly as he ambles down the stairs. Something about the setup of it pricks at the back of his mind, like a memory he’s too sleep-deprived to pick up on just yet. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket and gives a sleepy, “Morning,” anyway.

Mike smiles. “You were always the last one up,” he says fondly, laughing quietly to himself in a way that is much too normal for it being just shy of five in the morning. 

“Oh, that’s right,” Bev says, a matching smile lighting up her face. “Whenever we had sleepovers, we’d always fight to see who got to go wake you up.”

And _oh,_ now Richie remembers. The image of all the losers, piled over whoever’s living room furniture happened to be the backdrop for their hangout that week, as Richie came down the stairs with socked feet and a yawn. It didn’t happen often, but whenever he hit that sweet spot—sleeping in the latest of the seven of them, but not late enough that they’d get bored and come drag him out of bed—he would always relish the sequence of disappointment and excitement on their faces as he finally showed face. Disappointment, because no one got to jump on his sleeping body just for kicks; and excitement, because he was finally awake. 

Ben runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “Oh my god, yeah. You guys were _so_ mean.”

“Mean?” Bill, leaning over the bar counter, looks personally offended.

“Yeah, mean. I distinctly remember one of you pouring orange juice up his nose or something like that.”

“That wasn’t me, that was definitely Eddie.”

“Fuck you, Bill, as if I would ever get anywhere _near_ Richie’s disgusting nostrils.”

“I never said it was—”

“Oh, no,” Richie interrupts. This memory comes to him with no resistance now. It was their first sleepover of junior year, and it was Stanley, the meticulous son of a bitch, that took a glass of orange juice and carefully poured it into Richie’s poor, unassuming nostrils. He couldn’t smell anything but citrus for a _week._ Now he recalls it being a huge deal, so much that he built a character out of it just to get back at Stan—an uptight Floridian debutante, heiress to her father’s orange juice empire but hesitant to taking on the responsibility of the company after an unfortunate nose squirting incident. It was one of his better characters, actually. _Miss Octavia Orange._ In a later development, she even fell in love with a dashing farmer named Mike Hanlon that moved to her neck of the woods after all his crops died of Boring Town Disease.

And up until this very second, Richie had absolutely zero memory of any of it ever happening. He ignores the uneasy chill that shoots up his spine and puts on a smile. “The orange juice was Stan. Laughed to himself like a maniac when he did it, too—you know in that weird way he laughed when he didn’t actually make any sound?”

There’s a round of appreciative smiles as they remember and then a sort of eerie, heavy pause falls over them, like a blanket swiftly smothering the happy nostalgia of it all. Like, _oh, right, and now Stan is dead. He’s not going to make any sounds, laughing or otherwise._

Richie closes his eyes. _Good going, Rich,_ he thinks flatly, wincing as the realization washes over him again. The moment is done and the tiredness drains right back into him, making his bones feel full and heavy with the weight of the day ahead of them. 

“Alright.” He turns to Mike, sighing. “What are we doing, man?”

What they’re doing is this: taking the world’s longest walking tour through the world’s most whimsically heinous town. The fresh air does wonders in waking Richie up but leaves his hangover unaffected, throbbing still drumming in a steady beat over his temples. The walk is thankfully spent in silence, sky slowly shifting from a deep twilit blue to a cloudy yellow, sun shining through the trees as they reach the outskirts of town, traipsing through the reedy meadow by the bridge and into the woods. Each place they pass by strikes new flashes of familiarity in Richie’s mind, little fragments of a life lived that he has to remind himself is _his_ life, that _he’s_ lived. It’s foreign and ingrained within him all at once, and it’s overwhelmingly uncomfortable to realize he doesn’t even know how much he’s forgotten. 

It’s not something he really wants to think about at all, his first instinct being a strong allegiance to the _flight_ side of things, despite knowing somewhere deep in the still largely unaccessed part of him that he has to stay and fight. He wonders, somewhere shortly after the Barrens, if Mike is taking them through all of this to get them to remember, like there’s something they haven’t clued into yet that’s going to fix all of this, something _he_ never forgot. 

He knows it’s not going to be that easy, but at least for the duration of the walk, he can give himself the small pleasure of pretending. 

They make it to the woods not much longer after Richie loses that train of thought, sunlight streaming down from the tops of the trees in thick beams of golden light. There’s a small break in the trees, undeniably familiar, and Richie feels a smile itching at his lips. 

Ben’s the first one to break the silence. “This is where he came,” he says, a small revelation, “after the rock fight.”

“The clubhouse.” The words are out of Richie’s mouth before he even knows what he’s saying, and then the others are oohing and ahhing as the memories come out of the haze. Mike looks delighted.

As they climb (and fall, in Ben’s unfortunate case) down into the clubhouse, Richie finds that he knows every curve and crevice of the space, familiarity striking him deep inside. He sees dusty posters and knows he put them there, piles of comics and candy wrappers that he can nearly feel himself passing out to the losers, so proud to be able to afford them after mowing the lawn for his parents all that summer. 

And it’s a nice trip down memory lane, really, but it’s kind of like stumbling into a ghost town, half-finished meals and entire homes left behind with no sign of the people these lives belonged to. And maybe he has to stand in a dark corner and do a clown dance and freak out his friends he only remembered existed twenty four hours ago to cope with it. He’s a comedian, sue him for trying to be funny.

Bill finds their old showercaps and after the appropriate amount of reminiscing over their dead friend, Mike uses it to segue into the real reason they’re here: the tokens. 

And Richie doesn’t wanna be a dick or anything like that (because if the constant onslaught of childhood memories has one thing to say, it’s, _hey, you were kind of a dick)_ but this is fucking stupid. He’s caught up. They’re caught up. He was an annoying child with kickass friends and they beat up a clown in the sewers. It’s normal for people not to remember every single thing that happened to them when they were a kid.

But then Mike has to go and ask them what happened after Neibolt, and Richie realizes that not a single one of them can really recall that summer. There’s some short-lived back and forth where Richie makes a case for staying together, but it doesn’t stick and they all agree to split up and find their tokens.  
He knows. He doesn’t _know,_ but he knows. It’s there in the back of his mind like an itch, one that has been demanding to be scratched ever since he stepped foot into Jade last night and heard a reedy _oh, look at_ these _guys,_ from a voice he didn’t even remember memorizing, and then forgetting. Since he laid eyes on the musty old hammock down in the clubhouse and remembered his leg pressing up against someone else’s, a foot hooking onto his glasses and ruining his life. Since fucking forever, his entire life spent with this inexplicable absence, acute and unknown, something—some _one—_ fundamentally missing from him for the past twenty seven years. 

Richie’s token is that he’s fucking gay. Wonderful.

The group splits up once they make it back to the main part of town again, and Richie has no idea where he’s supposed to go, so he stops thinking about it and just walks, letting his legs take him wherever his subconscious wants to go.

He ends up at the old movie theatre. More specifically, the arcade in the front part of the theatre, old games in massive machines, graffitied over and collecting dust. Richie does not trust the tug in his heart that tells him to check out Street Fighter, but he does anyway, and he’s rewarded (punished?) handsomely with some fresh memories of trauma so old it could have its own trauma, like little grand-traumas for Richie to begrudgingly care for when his own trauma kicks it in some fiery accident. Which he supposes is the point, with the ritual and the sacrifice and what not, but— 

Yeah, whatever. This metaphor doesn’t really make any sense except as a stalling tactic. Too bad, Tozier—this is barely the beginning, and the show must go on.

(And on, and on, and on, and on. But—oh, we’ll get to that. Patience, please.) 

He remembers Bowers’ cousin, who, with the gift of hindsight, he definitely thought was cute. Something about the freckles and moles dotting his face made little Richie want to die, or made him feel like he already had. Again, in hindsight: awfully transparent of him. Anyway, there was Street Fighter and there was Bowers et al., calling him things he only vaguely understood the meaning of while everyone watched him get flipped inside out, deepest fears on display for the whole arcade to see.

Oh, yes. _That_ part of his summer. Richie walks numbly to the token machine and exchanges a quarter for a token. _At least I can make a joke about my token being a token,_ he thinks absently. He sure as shit isn’t going to make a joke about being gay, so this is the next best thing. 

He can’t go back to the townhouse, at least not yet. He can still feel the arcade watching him, judging eyes prying deep inside him and cracking his ribcage open, heart beating ugly and urgent, exposed for the whole word to see. He doesn’t need the losers to see it, too. Which is funny, because if he’s ever been seen, it’s by them. But he knows that if he goes back right now, they’ll know—Eddie will _know—_ and that is not a thought Richie can handle, at the moment. He’d rather pay Eddie’s mom one last visit. If the coffin is a rockin’, don’t come a knockin’, yeah?

He finds himself walking through the park across from town hall, and dully recalls the statue of Paul Bunyan trying to murder him shortly after the arcade incident. Because why not, right? He’s so lost in the thought of it that he almost doesn’t notice the mauled face of the man shoving a flyer into his hands. 

Oh, and the flyer is a program for his own funeral, because of course it is. Before he has a chance to swallow back the fear, to remember the missing flyer with his face on it and tell himself _it’s not real, it’s just the fucking clown,_ a horridly familiar voice asks, “Did you miss me, Richie?”

 _Fuck._ He can’t move, can’t breathe. He knew about the clown, remembered what they did. But seeing It? Right here in front of him, taunting him about truth or dare and secrets with that disgusting little voice, the fucking _drool_ pouring off his lips? He remembers then, a flash of an image, It bent over Eddie and pinning him down, drool dripping onto Eddie’s cheeks while Richie watched frozen from the other side of the room. It floats down off the statue’s shoulder—the aptness of the upside down triangle of balloons as it goes on about dirty little secrets not lost on Richie—and he resorts to the very mature strategy of squeezing his eyes shut tight and chanting “it’s not real” over and over again like he’s wishing on a fucking star.

Too bad _this_ star is actually a meteor carrying a fucking demon clown!

It doesn’t work, obviously, so Richie decides _fuck it,_ and runs away screaming and does not stop running until he makes it to the townhouse. He feels bad being rude to Bev and Ben—especially since oh, hey, that’s right, Ben was totally in love with her, which certainly seems to still be the case if the way he’s looking at her when Richie blazes by is any indication—but it doesn’t make him feel bad enough to stay. 

He nods and _hmms_ at all the right places when Ben comes into his room a minute later, discreetly shoving things into his bag while Ben is going on earnestly about friendship and commitment and whatever sappy shit he got to relive while Richie was off being hate crimed by a clown. And he’s purposefully not listening to the words that are coming out of Ben’s mouth, because he knows his escape plan is going to be dead in the water if he does. 

“You hear me?” Ben eventually says, clearly at the end of his pitch and looking at Richie expectantly, eyebrows knitting together in concern. 

Richie blinks. “Yeah, man. Thanks,” he says, voice low and humble. He steals a glance up and finds a satisfied looking Ben, who gives him a hearty pat on the shoulder and smiles.

“I’ll give you a minute or two, okay?”

“Okay,” Richie says, keeping the sad expression on his face until Ben retreats through the door once more, shutting it behind him. Screw comedy, he should be a goddamned actor. Richie Tozier for the EGOT!

He wastes no time in slinging his bag over his shoulder and booking it down the fire escape, mustang ripping out of the back lot before he has a chance to change his mind. And now he’s muttering—he knows that he’s muttering, he’s fully aware, but he is in no way equipped to stop. Richie Tozier has exactly two tells when it comes to being scared out of his fucking mind: incessant talking (under this umbrella we have jokes, i.e. his entire career, and muttering) and puking. 

And this car is a rental, so muttering it is. 

He doesn’t get far before he comes up to a familiar red-bricked building, rolling to a stop outside. And at this point he understands that there’s nothing he can do about it, so he drags himself out of the car and into the synagogue to scratch that itch and let his ears feast on another memory pop. 

He remembers Stan spitting some absolute fucking bars at his bar mitzvah, and he remembers _loving_ it. The thing about Stan was that he cared immensely about some things, mostly things that no other thirteen year old boy ever considered: the dirt under his fingernails, the way in which his clothes lied flat over his body, and birds. But he also apparently just didn’t give a shit when it came to other things, objectively important things, like following the social norms of getting bar mitzvah’d. 

But above all of the important and the not important, he was a loser, and that was the one thing about Stan that outweighed the rest. It was the thing that broke him out of the routines and rituals he meticulously followed, the wildcard of love and loyalty as fierce as Richie’s ever known—even when it had him getting beat up by Bowers, or cleaning up a bathroom full of blood, or abandoned in the sewers. All of this truly the stuff of his own personal nightmares, but things he endured anyway, for the losers. 

Stanley Uris was an absolute fucking gift to the world, and if he weren’t dead, he’d be telling Richie to get his head out of his ass.

So, he does.

He kills Bowers not even two minutes after he gets to the library, which is how he knows the rest of this night is going to be a shitshow. If he’s being honest, it’s actually really fucking scary. He doesn’t realize it until the moment he sees Bowers hovering over Mike with a knife, but Richie always kind of thought Mike was invincible. Like, he was never going to die—all the rest of them could get fucked up, but Mike was the one that was going to be alright in the end. 

He realizes now that that’s not even remotely close to true. Any of them, including Mike, could die because of this. Because of anything, even something as stupid as fucking Bowers. Hell, Bowers is dead because of something as stupid as fucking _Richie._

Sometime after he finishes puking, Ben, Bev, and Eddie run in. Eddie is sporting a bloody square of bandage on his cheek and his stomach leaps again.

“Hey, what the fuck happened to you?” he asks, quietly, and once he’s cleaned the puke off his face. Eddie is leaning against one of the tables, arms crossed over his stomach. His eyes are trained over on Mike, sitting down and getting patched up by Ben. He doesn’t appear to have heard Richie’s question.

“Eds?” he tries again, going to nudge Eddie’s foot with his own but thinking better of it, keeping his distance. Eddie finally turns to him, squinting. 

“What? Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “Are you alright?”

“What?”

He widens his eyes skeptically. “You know, killing a guy?”

“Oh. I mean—” _no, obviously not,_ but he doesn’t say that. Instead he shrugs. “What happened to your face?”

Eddie blinks like he has no idea what Richie’s talking about. “Oh,” he says after a beat, “Yeah, right. Bowers.” 

_“Bowers?”_

“He came into my room at the townhouse and stabbed me. Said It said it was my time. Fucking great, right?”

Richie feels like he might throw up again. How many times was Eddie gonna have to almost die because of this shit? The thought sends Richie into a frenzy, sudden wave of nausea washing over him once more as black circles dance across his vision. It’s a fucking miracle that they’ve all made it this far. And there’s no way they can make it out with all of them; that fucker isn’t going to go down without taking at least one more person. His hands start to shake and he shoves them numbly into his pockets, brain absently running through his stock of jokes he could sputter out once Eddie catches on, something to make him tell Richie to shut up even though he’s still smiling, distract him from the rest of it, the rest of him. And maybe that would be enough for Richie, get him to stop freaking the fuck out like he’s thirteen and crying on a park bench again. 

He feels the vague sensation of a hand on his arm, faraway and detached. He spares a glance down and realizes that it’s Eddie. “Richie, Richie, _Rich—_ hey, are you—”

“He’s going to fight It alone.” The room falls silent as Mike speaks. 

_Bill._ Just like the fucking last time. Richie’s thoughts slow down as he processes this, panic subsiding and giving way to plain old fear and dread. _Fucking christ._ His eyes fall on the jar, focusing in on the side closest to him where the carving is all scratched up. He picks it up to get a closer look and Mike grabs it from him. _Alright, guess I’ll go fuck myself._

They go to Neibolt, because that’s the only place they can go at this point. It’s where Bill is, and it’s where this is all going to come to an end, one way or another. They all cram into Ben’s rental, because it’s the roomiest and because he’s probably the most emotionally stable one at this point. Which isn’t saying a lot, but they get there in one piece regardless, Ben pulling to the side of the road as they see Bill ditch his bike outside the house. 

Richie barely feels himself get out of the car, doesn’t remember the walk to the gate of the house. There’s something building, something he can’t see, like a shift in the air pressure, something slowly clicking into place. It feels wrong. It feels like it isn’t going to be enough, that it’s going to be like last time and they’ll have to come and do this all over again, trapped in a loop. 

He has no basis for any of this, just a feeling deep and rotting inside his gut. He tries to ignore it. _This is the last time,_ he assures himself, _you only have to do this shit one more time and then it’s over._ He repeats it like a mantra. _This is the last time. This is the last time._

He doesn’t even register that the others are talking until he hears Bill say his name.

“Richie said it b-b-best when we were here last.”

“I did?” Everyone is looking at him expectantly, and he racks his brain. “I don’t wanna die?”

“Not that.”

Really, he’s coming up with nothing here. “You’re lucky we’re not measuring dicks?” A beat. Some dark, smelly cavern. A baseball bat? _Oh._ “Let’s kill this fucking clown?”

Bill smiles. 

“Let’s kill this fucking clown.”

Just about the first thing they do is split up, which is obviously a huge mistake, because the next thing that happens is they find Stanley, packed into a nasty old fridge, flesh mottled with rot. And if Richie thought seeing his dead best friend’s head roll around on the floor was the worst thing that could happen to him today, he would find himself sorely mistaken not four seconds later.

“Richie,” Stan’s head says as the scars on his face start to sprout legs, “what’s happening to me?” Oh, and that does something in some musty old corner of Richie’s brain. There’s something there, something he might be able to access if there wasn’t a literal demon in the room.

It… stands? Yeah, Stanley’s head stands, on its spider legs, and takes a moment to let out a burst of desperate, hysterical laughter before scuttling across the room and charging at Richie. It moves so fast that he can barely see it, but he can certainly hear it loud and clear, thin and wet shrieks paired with the flat, erratic clicking of its feet on the floor. It goes over a ledge at one point and falls out of sight, the room falling quiet except for the sound of heavy breathing.

“Eddie, you okay?” He’s standing in the corner of the room, leaning back up against the walls as if he’d be on the ground without them.

He starts in on an _I’m_ but abandons the syllable when a thick trail of drool drops between the two of them, heads teetering back to look up at the source.

“Oh, there he is,” Richie says, Eddie’s scream cutting him off as Stan jumps down onto his face and knocks him to the floor. And maybe this is payback for that time all those years ago, when he made fun of Stan for not wanting spiders in his hair. Maybe it’s for letting him go off alone in the sewers and getting his face sucked by the lady from the painting, setting him up for a life of fear and dysfunction. 

He doesn't know why _this_ is the particular creature he gets to face in this round at the house of horrors, but he does know that he’s officially afraid of fucking spiders.

Eventually someone gets it off him. There’s some screaming, and some apologizing, and Richie purposefully blocks it out, letting his head fall back onto someone’s—Bev’s?—leg and just breathes, hoping whatever comes next is just straight up clown nonsense rather than clown disguised as deformed versions of the dead people you love nonsense. 

They end up going down the well and back into the cistern, then down another cavern into the centre of it all, impact crater like a stage, empty and waiting for a worthy opponent. He tells Eddie that he’s braver than he thinks then pats him on the cheek because he’s an awful person that doesn’t know how to show affection. He thinks that maybe if they hadn’t forgotten each other he might’ve turned out different, turned out better. Maybe Eddie wouldn’t need to take his inhaler one last time before throwing it in the fire, and maybe Richie wouldn’t have to argue with him about it. He could say, _hey, I’m proud of you._

There’s a lot of things that Richie could say.

They start the ritual instead, and everything from that point on happens very, very fast. The deadlights descend upon them and Richie gets that sinking feeling again that something is very wrong. And it is, because Mike shuts the lid on the jar and a balloon comes out. Then, the fucking clown—spider redux, and also massive, of course, because why not—appears and tells them the ritual was bullshit to begin with. Then, Mike almost dies and they all get split up, Richie with Eddie and a row of closet doors ( _not_ funny). Then, Mike almost dies again, and Richie lobs a fuck you in the form of a rock, and gets caught in the deadlights.

It’s cold, floating up there. 

The brightness of it never fades, searing through Richie’s eyes until he can feel the burn throbbing in the back of his skull. Still, it’s cold. It’s not uncomfortable, per se, but he is definitely aware that he has no control over his limbs, entire body gone limp with heavy pressure in his head—thick and dense but pitching upwards, as if there was a string pulling him up. 

Pulling him up to float, with Georgie and the rest of them. 

Beyond the crystalline white there is another kind of pull, beckoning him not elsewhere, but here, just not right now. It’s just flickering, weak and retreating but discernible nonetheless: jagged rock and cleancut iridium, bathed in blue light; a rumbling from above; a pair of hands reaching out but not close enough, never close enough. They flash in a second and stretch on for eternity at the same time, striking Richie deep in his core. 

Then, he drops to the ground and sees Eddie on top of him, _I think I got him, man,_ pure elation, and then— 

And then, Eddie gets skewered. 

Richie watches with horror as he’s flung into a crevice, limp body tumbling out of sight like a ragdoll. He blinks and he’s at Eddie’s side, Mike and Ben propping him upright as Richie can only watch on, helpless. If he had anything left in him to throw up, he would. 

“I almost killed It,” Eddie says, low and strained. “The leper. My hands were at his throat, I could feel him choking. I made him small.”

They fully run with that, Mike and Bev working in tandem to connect the dots faster than Richie can even hear the words out of Eddie’s mouth. They take him to another part of the cistern, more open, and all Richie can think is _no, no, no._ He is not thinking about Pennywise, or laws of shapes, or any sort of strategy. He is thinking of summer nights bathed in a chorus of June bugs, laughs harmonizing on warm rooftops. He is thinking of tearful goodbyes and forgotten promises. He is thinking of lost time. He is thinking of snapping bones back into place. He is thinking of second chances, and third, and fourth, and fifth, and how many ever it takes to fix all of it, to give them the _them_ they deserve to be.

He is thinking of the hole in Eddie’s torso. 

“Richie, I gotta tell you something.”

Eddie said that to him once, before. 

“What, what’s up buddy?”

“I fucked your mom.”

He’s said that, too. 

He’s going to call Eddie a bitch, but then he starts laughing and Richie can’t do anything but let him have this. He can try again later, tell Richie for real. And Richie can tell him, too, for real, and they can finally start that thing they were too scared to start when they were kids. 

_It’s going to be fine. He’s going to be fine._ The others make a move on the clown, heading back into the thick of it. No one urges him to leave Eddie’s side. Bev gives him a look, knowing and silent, and he files it away to be embarrassed about later. Right now, he has more important things to be worried about. 

“Richie,” Eddie says, hand blindly grabbing at Richie’s, pressed to Eddie’s stomach. “You have to kill him. Please.”

“I know, Eds, I know. We’re gonna get him.” His voice cracks and he feels a burn in the back of his eyes. “You did so good,” he adds, bringing his free hand to cup Eddie’s good cheek. It’s covered in blood. 

“Don’t call me Eds,” he says weakly, bringing his own arm up to mirror Richie’s, resting it on his cheek and wiping twitchily at the tears there. “You know I…” Eddie trails off, looking thoughtful. 

Richie’s breath hitches thickly. “What is it?”

“Go help them. Let me think it over.” 

Richie goes. Lets him think it over. He rips off the claw with Eddie’s insides smeared all over it and crushes It’s heart in his hand.

Back down, on his knees in the blood and dirt. 

(They’ve always been unfinished, a thought left hanging in midair. A story with the middle torn out: a beginning, full of promise, and then a _please don’t go,_ an _I wish I could stay,_ then nothing—a void with the ghosts of torn edges, not paper but flesh, insides spilling out thick and bloody like _I think I got him._ And Richie’s always been a thing of false starts, tripping over childish wishes with knees bloody and bruised since the day he was thirteen, worshiping at the altar of dead gods like Hope and Deserve.

A body and a thought, both dead: is this what’s deserved?

It’s not, but it’s what happens.)

“Eddie?” His eyes are unmoving, cheek cold under Richie’s touch. He can feel the others there, warmth enveloping him from behind. Bev lets out a choked sob and the world cracks like thunder around them, crying out with her.

“Richie,” she says. He doesn’t look back until it’s Bill. It was always Bill—Bill with his heart in his throat, words fighting to squeeze around it as it beat, rhythm like a metronome that Richie felt in his chest each time his voice broke above the rest. Bill who could speak bravery into existence, who could send strangers into the sewers, just because he asked. Bill who could be so evil, if he wanted, but who only ever loved and loved and loved, just to lose every single time and choose to keep loving anyway.

Bill, whose words were so often unfinished that you knew if he chose to spoke them, they must have been true.

“I think he’s gone.”

He’s wrong. “He’s alright. No, he’s just hurt, we gotta get him out of here.” Bill’s been wrong before, he’s been wrong about a lot of things. The more he says it, the more certain Richie feels. Eddie is fine, he’s _fine._ He turns to Bev. “He’s okay, we gotta get him out of here. Bev—” 

“Richie.” He’s fine. They just need to get him out of the sewers. If they just get him out, they can still help him. “Honey, he’s dead.”

He turns away, holds Eddie close to him. The boy he met on the second day of first grade, because his mother told him he was too sick to go on the first. His first ever friend, who he was so nervous to lose that he broke down crying when he asked his parents if he could invite him over. The boy who only knew how to love quickly and fiercely, despite never being taught how. The boy who took one look at Richie’s heart and said _oh, this is mine now._ Richie’s entire heart, all of his love: first, last, every in between. Never to have, and only to hold at the very end of it all, once death comes to sink its claws after the dirty work is done.

Richie thinks that maybe if he holds on tight enough it’ll get him, too.

In the end, they leave him in the sewers. 

They leave him. When he needs them most, they leave him buried underground in a tomb of piss and shit and everything he’s ever hated. Richie wants to go back—tries to go back, more than once, Mike and Ben wrestling him to the dirt on the street, by the farm, at the quarry. He wants to go back and rot in there with him, to drag him out and get him some help, to piss on the ashes of that fucking clown and ask the universe where their god is now, where’s _his_ fucking god.

He wants to go back. 

And it’s not because he wants—if it was because he wanted, then this story would have a much simpler ending. An ending that would probably make you and I much happier, but this isn’t that story and this isn’t that ending. 

No, it’s not because he wants. It’s because we’ve hit a wall, the three of us: you, me, and Richie. We’ve come to a dead end. There doesn’t seem to be a way out of this one. We can’t keep going, so the only logical thing to do is to try again.

So, let’s give this thing a shot, for real now.

**Eddie is dead. What would you like to do?**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184112#workskin)** [](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184112#workskin)


	3. twist a little closer, now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

When Richie wakes up, he still has a hangover. It’s early again, body somehow dragging him back to consciousness before dawn despite what he put it through yesterday. 

Yesterday. He doesn’t want to think about it, throat seizing up at just the thought of trying to go deeper into those half-awake flashes, like remnants of a bad dream. Except this time, he’s never going to wake up from it. 

There are voices, then, coming from downstairs. He thinks  _ what the fuck, guys,  _ because there is absolutely no reason for any of them to be awake at this hour, much less having a chat. He’s about to fold his pillow over his head and will himself back to sleep when the noise picks up again, and he catches a particular voice among the mix.  _ Eddie.  _

Richie jolts up in bed, entire body gone cold. It’s impossible. Eddie is back in the sewers where they abandoned him. Eddie is  _ dead. _ He can’t be downstairs. This is just Richie’s mind playing some horrible kind of trick on him, or some grief hallucination. It isn’t real.

Still, he checks. He has to check. 

“Oh, hey Rich, we were just going to come see if you were up.” It’s Mike that speaks first as Richie creaks down the stairs, clutching the banister like a lifeline. There are four pairs of eyes staring up at him.

“He always was the last one up,” Bev says, mostly to Bill.

“Oh, that’s right,” Ben adds, “We were always fighting to see who got to wake him.”

Richie’s pretty sure he’s not breathing. He stops at the first landing of the stairs. “Hey guys,” he says carefully. “What—what, uh, what are we all doing up so early?”

And that’s most definitely not the right thing to say, because everyone’s face drops instantly. Mike frowns. “The ritual. We have to get a couple things done, first.”

Oh. Oh, okay, this is. This is not right. Richie tries to communicate this but can’t seem to get a word out, tongue laying dead in his mouth.  _ We fucking did the ritual,  _ he wants to say. His brain feels like an old modem, screeching its way through a dial up so he can connect to whatever fucking network of nonsense that the rest of the losers seem to be in on. 

But before he can get there, someone else walks into the room. 

“The coffee machine is disgusting, don’t even—oh,  _ finally.  _ Jesus, asshole, you couldn’t even bother to put on pants?”

“Eddie?” 

Yeah, Richie’s definitely having a stroke. Eddie, in the flesh and most definitely  _ alive, _ puts his empty coffee mug down on the bar with disdain, then turns back to Richie with an annoyed look. “What?”

“Oh, nothing, just that I watched you die yesterday,” he says, except it comes out more like, “Uhm?”

“You okay, Rich?” Bill asks, standing from his spot perched on Bev’s armchair. He looks deeply concerned.

_ Me too, Billy. Me fucking too.  _ “I’m gonna go… get dressed,” he says awkwardly, nearly tripping backwards up the stairs as he retreats, ignoring their confused reactions. He doesn’t go back to his room but straight to the bathroom, dropping to his knees and dry heaving into the toilet immediately. This has to be some sick kind of joke, or an insanely vivid dream. 

_ Or,  _ says a small, familiar voice,  _ a second chance.  _

He jerks back from the toilet, nearly launching himself into the wall. His mind is a chorus of  _ what the fuck?  _ as the idea sinks in. A second chance. A second chance? A laugh rips unexpectedly out of him, short and high, unhinged. He supposes weirder things have happened, especially when the fucking clown is concerned. He knows It’s not above using dead people to torture them. Maybe this is just another elaborate trick, fucking with him from beyond the grave. As much as he’d like to believe that, there’s something about it that just doesn’t sit right with Richie. They  _ killed  _ It. He held It’s heart in his hand watched it disintegrate into ash.

It’s crazy. It’s absolutely insane to even entertain the idea that there is someone, some _ thing, _ out there watching this all unfold and deciding  _ hey, why not give the kid another swing?  _ as if this is little league baseball and not the concepts of time and death. It’s insane. It’s not happening.

But… What the fuck is, then? It’s clear even from that short exchange that the other losers are not a part of whatever fever dream Richie is experiencing right now. The more he thinks about it, the less he thinks it’s that insane. Like, why the fuck not, right? He asked to go back. He wanted it. Is that not enough? Is there something out there secretly rooting for him? Are there bigger things in play here, and he’s only a very small part of some bigger plan? Maybe Eddie dying set off a chain reaction of fucked up shit that the universe doesn’t want happening, and Richie is the one they’ve picked to fix it. 

Alright, that’s one theory. One that Richie likes, because that means that he  _ can  _ save Eddie, that he’s supposed to save Eddie. He can do it over again and fix everything if he just gets it right.

He leans back against the wall of the bathroom, pressing his cheek against the cool tile. What’s one more time?

There’s a knock at the door, quick and quiet. “Richie?” It’s Bev. “You alright in there?”

He takes a breath. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. Just hungover. I’m good, now.” It’s not technically a lie. He  _ is  _ hungover, very much so. It’s almost worse the second time around, he thinks. 

Bev sighs on the other side of the door. He thinks she might be leaning her head against it. It just seems like a Bev thing to do. “Okay,” she says finally, relieved and a bit of something else he can’t place. “Mike wants to leave as soon as we can.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. I’ll be down in a minute,” he says, waving his hand dismissively even though she can’t see it. He waits until he hears her footsteps fade down the hall before dragging himself up off the floor and leaning over the sink, splashing water in his face. 

It’s one day. He can manage one day.

He decides to keep quiet on the walk to the clubhouse. Something about the fact that everyone else seems to think this is the first time they’re living this day tells Richie that the re-do is his and his alone. He knows they would help him, no questions asked—that’s been proven at this point. But he doesn’t want to mess with the mechanics of it if he doesn’t even know how it works. He just needs to keep his head down and get through this without letting Eddie die. 

It’s somehow not as daunting doing it all again. His spirits have lifted significantly by the time they get there, and Richie finds himself happily resigned to just blindly accepting that this is something that’s happening to him.  _ It’s fine,  _ he tells himself,  _ I’m going to save Eddie. He’s going to live. Everything’s gonna be alright. _

He manages to more or less stick to yesterday’s script, though it is substantially unnerving to hear the losers saying the exact same shit they said the first time around. He hates it, deeply, but grits his teeth and deals with it. If it’s all going the same, that means he’s doing it right. The only thing that has to change is Eddie. He can feel it, deep in his gut, that this is it. 

He goes through the motions of the day: arcade, park, townhouse, synagogue, library, Neibolt. It might be the first to-do list Richie’s ever completed, mentally checking off each part of the day with the most scrutiny he’s ever afforded to anything, ever, except maybe his adolescent self trying to figure out all the things that would make Eddie laugh, or hit him upside the head, or just look at him. 

He gets caught in the deadlights, drops to the ground a few seconds later. Eddie hovers over him.

“I think—”

He grabs Eddie’s shoulders, twisting them both to the side and rolling their bodies across the ground, jagged rock scraping along their spines. A second later, a hooked claw tears into the ground not ten feet away from their heads.

“Holy fuck,” Eddie gasps, still gripping the collar of Richie’s shirt. 

Richie could die. “Tell me about it,” he says, voice much higher and broken than he’d like. If Eddie can tell, he doesn’t show it, face still a perfect picture of shock and gratitude, eyes locked on the new hole in the ground in out-of-body disbelief.

“It was gonna—I would’ve...” 

“Yeah, I know.” He resists the urge to scream. “Get up,” he says, finally letting go of Eddie and pushing himself upright, “we have to, uh, fuck. We have to make him small.”

“Make him small?”

“Yeah, like the leper,” he says it without thinking first, and the look on Eddie’s face is enough for him to send his internal monologue into a string of profanities.  _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck. He didn’t fucking tell you that yet today, dipshit.  _

Eddie nods anyway, confusion giving way to determination, lips pressed tightly together. He scrambles oddly to his feet and offers a hand. “Okay. Let’s get him.”

He looks around and finds that Ben, Bev, and Bill are all back from whatever solo hellscapes they were sent off to, along with Mike taking cover not too far off. “Guys!” Richie yells, waving over to them. He supposes this is where he’s gonna have to start winging this shit. “We have to make It small!”

He gets several  _ looks  _ in return. “What?” Bev yells back, not at all grasping the concept. Richie sighs. It was  _ her  _ idea the first time, he’s just bouncing it back, kind of. Anyway— 

“We’re not scared of you!” he screams, turning to the clown instead. It frowns in return, stomping as much as one can while equipped with spider legs over to where Richie and Eddie are standing. “You dumb fucking clown!”

Eddie joins in. “Stupid ugly clown! Bitchass motherfucker!” 

The others quickly catch on, screaming some very impassioned insults at a quickly cowering Pennywise. It’s a lot more fun this time around when Richie 1) knows that this is actually going to kill It, 2) doesn’t have to worry about Eddie bleeding out while it’s happening, and 3) has Eddie by his side screaming right along with him.

As he always has been, as he always should be. 

Richie can feel it, now, that he’s won, that he’s passed the test and done it right this time. The six of them stand in the centre of the cistern and watch It fade into nothing, then climb back through all the passageways and watch Neibolt collapse to the ground.

The walk to the quarry is distinctly less of a funeral march than the first time around. 

At one point Eddie says, “Thanks for saving my ass back there.” It’s quiet, like he doesn’t want the others to hear, and it makes Richie’s chest convulse.

“No prob, Bob,” he says, because he is an idiot. 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I don’t even know why I try with you.” He says it all exasperated, but he doesn’t move to leave Richie’s side, their steps still falling in tandem. “Whatever,” he continues, “I could have died, so thanks.”

He considers his options.  _ Is  _ he going to tell them about whatever the fuck he went through today? He truly hasn’t thought that far ahead yet. He looks at Eddie, looks at the way he bites his lip, cheek twitching erratically.

He can wait until tomorrow to bring out the doomsday redo bombshell.

But, for now, he can have a bit of fun: “Oh, you  _ definitely  _ would’ve died.”

“Fuck off, you can’t say I definitely would’ve died. You are not the only variable in whether I live or die. You’re not  _ that  _ hot shit, Tozier.”

Richie smiles. “But I am hot shit?”

Eddie stops in his tracks, closing his eyes and breathing deep. Richie cracks a short laugh and Eddie only shakes his head. 

“Eds, you alright?” The rest of them have stopped now, watching Eddie expectantly with amusement and concern splitting their faces. Eddie just sighs again, rolling his head from side to side like he’s trying to stretch his neck.

“Rich’s just being an asshole,” he says at the exact same time as Richie goes, “He’s just coming to terms with how hot I am.”

The others seem to accept this at face value, shrugging and continuing their trek down Neibolt, towards the outskirts of town. Richie swears he hears Bev mutter something like  _ finally  _ into Ben’s shoulder, but he can’t be sure. And oh, yeah—now he vaguely recalls those two finally sucking face down at the quarry yesterday while he was sobbing himself into dehydration over Eddie. The thought sends a shock of dread through him, heartbeat pounding in his ears for a second before he remembers that that’s not real anymore. Today is today. Yesterday never happened, and Eddie is  _ here. _

“Rich?” Eddie’s beside him now, caught up from where they left him to ponder his life choices a couple dozen feet back or so. His hand hesitates for a moment but then lands on Richie’s arm, the weight of it grounding him and bringing him back to today. “You good?”

He smiles. “Yeah, I’m good.” Eddie smiles back—as much as he can with the getting stabbed and all—and Richie gets this insane urge to take Eddie’s hand and hold it in his. He realizes in this moment that it doesn’t feel much different than how he feels normally, because he’s had this insane urge to take Eddie’s hand and hold it in his, his entire life. A thousand  _ almosts  _ blurring through Richie’s mind at once: movie theatre armrests, lunchtime brushes of skin on skin, and forbidden nights, quiet and inches away in the sheets—a permanent state of wanting, always within reach but never brave enough to try. 

Eddie quirks an odd smile, on the edge of something Richie is too keyed up to identify. “You sure?”

**Well, we've made it this far. Should Richie tell Eddie how he feels?**

**>[Yes, use this post-victory adrenaline high and come clean right now!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184322#workskin)**

**>[No, keep quiet for now and tell him later.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184391#workskin)**


	4. There's a rally for Garrett.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

“Yeah,” Richie assures. It comes out a little bit breathy and he realizes that he’s nervous, of all things. Neither of them make any move to catch up with the group. 

“Listen, Rich,” Eddie says at the same time Richie says, “Eds, I,” and they both fumble over themselves for a moment, doing the _I’m sorry,_ and _no, please, go ahead_ dance until the responsibility is dumped onto Richie, mouth flapping open and shut as he realizes he has no idea what to say. 

He does know that he’s not going to let this opportunity be squandered. He lost Eddie once, and this time he isn’t leaving any secrets to burn in some fake-ass ritual. He owes it to himself to stop the bullshit, and he owes it to Eddie to finally let him know how much he’s loved— _really_ loved, for who he is and nothing else. He just doesn’t know how to _say_ that.

Eddie looks at him expectantly, but it isn’t accusing like Richie might except. 

It’s hopeful.

“Eddie, I—I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d lost you in there,” he starts, watching Eddie’s face carefully. He doesn’t look surprised, but he doesn’t really react, either. Richie swallows and keeps going. “I, um. I’ve been remembering a lot, these past few days. About Derry, and everything that happened, and, uh, us.”

He inhales sharply, barely even a sound, but there. “What about us?”

He freezes up at the sound of Eddie’s voice, body gone rigid. Eddie definitely notices because he pulls his hand away from Richie’s arm, and Richie can _see_ the cogs turning in his mind, jumping to all the wrong conclusions and starting to backpedal. Richie definitely can’t let that happen. 

“That I was in love with you when we were kids,” he says finally, voice warping weirdly as he squeezes the words up and out of his throat. 

Eddie blinks about four hundred times. “You—when we. Uh, in?” It’s very possible that he’s stroking out. Richie keeps talking anyway, already well past the point of no return.

“I always wanted to tell you, but obviously that never happened,” he says, wondering what he’ll say next. “And when I saw you at the restaurant I was like, _‘shit,_ I’m still fucking whipped for this weirdo. _God.’”_ He laughs to himself then, not quite like a maniac but definitely getting there. He just feels so _light._ “Anyway. I just—if you’d died back there, I wouldn’t ever get to tell you. I just thought you should know. That’s all.” 

He gets the sudden feeling that _this_ is what he was supposed to do.

(Richie’s been wrong before, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.)

Eddie, meanwhile: “You just thought I should _know?”_ His voice is squeaky and incredulous.

Richie shrugs. He feels like he’s high, rush of the confession rendering him unable to give a shit. It’s not what he thought would happen—certainly not what he fantasized about happening, and god, has Richie fantasized about this happening. He thought we would be holding his breath, waiting for some massive crash that was bound to come with Eddie’s response, positive or not. 

Instead, he just feels light. He shrugs and says, “Yeah, is that weird?” like they’re talking about what kind of apple is his favourite and not how Eddie’s the only person he’s ever loved. 

Eddie narrows his eyes. “Is that—Richie, you—” he cuts himself off in favour of grabbing Richie by the lapels of his shirt and yanking him in close, smashing their lips together before Richie has the chance to react. His hands float up uselessly, settling on Eddie’s hips just before he pulls away with a loud, wet sound. 

“Oh, God, you taste like sewage,” he laughs, face contorting into disgust. Richie can’t help but laugh too. He really isn’t wrong. 

“Well, Eds, it might surprise you to learn this, but I actually just spent the night in the sewers,” he says cheerfully, “Lovely little place, lots of fascinating history, but I’ll admit the service was kind of shit. The host tried to kill me and all my friends, actually.” 

Eddie snorts and leans his forehead into Richie’s. “Shitty host.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

They stare stupidly into each other’s eyes for another moment or two, and then Eddie brings a hand up to cup Richie’s cheek. “I thought it was just me,” he says softly, eyes shining suspiciously. “I like, _pined_ over you, man.”

Richie steals another kiss, quick enough not get another taste of greywater. “The whole time, Eds. I was in love with you the whole entire time.”

Eddie sniffs loudly just as a loud bout of hollers sounds off down the road. Richie begrudgingly pulls away to find the rest of the losers stopped in their tracks up ahead waving their arms excitedly. Eddie groans and lets his head fall against Richie’s chest with a dull, hollow _thunk._ And it kind of hurts because Eddie’s skull is evidently really thick and he also kind of clips the edge of Richie’s collarbone, but—yeah, okay, he could get used to this. 

“Finally!” Bev yells, “Took you idiots long enough!” Richie can see her shoulders shaking in a laugh he can’t hear. He sticks his hand up high in the air and flips her off, leaning down to kiss the top of Eddie’s head as he cringes again. 

“Oh, jesus,” He mutters, trying not to gag.

Eddie laughs against his chest before finally pulling back to give Richie a (unfortunately literal, in this case) shit-eating grin. “Forgot about the sewage?” 

“Yeah, holy shit,” he says, “do you think we’re gonna get e coli?” 

Eddie’s face drops and without a word he turns on his heel and starts walking away. “No,” he says, “Nope, no, nope. I take it all back. I’m leaving now.” 

_“I hate to see you go but I love to watch you walk away,”_ Richie sings, with little skill, doing a little dance just for himself because he knows that Eddie is not going to turn around. And he doesn’t; he just keeps walking, the little shake of his head the only indication he’s heard Richie’s serenade. And Richie decides to just stand there for a minute, watching Eddie walk away (and, as previously established, loving it) as he catches up with the rest of the group, shoving Bill as he slings an arm around Eddie’s shoulders. Mike and Ben share a high five above their heads, Bev doubling over in laughter beside them. And _oh,_ Richie thinks, _oh yeah. These are my idiots._

This time, he gets to keep them.

Later that night they’re lying in Richie’s bed, face to face. The room is bright with moonlight, washing everything a pale blue, Eddie backlit with a halo of light against his dark hair. It’s such a familiar sight that Richie can almost convince himself he’s been looking at it his entire life, like he hasn’t missed out on twenty seven years of hushed, sleepy voices and hands only brave enough to touch where the light doesn’t hit. Except this time, their hands are clasped firmly together, no indication of ever planning to let go. 

“We should probably go to sleep,” Eddie says, pouting, like he doesn’t want it to be true. 

_I should probably go before your mom wakes up, Richie says, earlier._

“Then let’s go to sleep,” Richie says, this time. 

_Yeah, probably, Eddie says, not wanting this, either._

“Here?”

_I wish I could stay, Richie doesn’t say._

“Yeah,” he says, voice so soft it almost cracks, “stay with me.”

 _He never says it, just unfurls himself from the blankets and swings a leg over the side of the window, reveling in the sound of Eddie’s sleepy goodbye and trying not to think too hard about what it would sound like if it was a_ goodnight _instead._

“Okay.” It sounds like a smile. “Goodnight, Rich.”

“Night, Eddie.”

He wakes up early again and thinks that maybe this is just how his body is going to work, now. He kind of feels like shit, but other than that he doesn’t mind being awake at this hour. He has a whole new day in front of him.

The first thing he notices after his headache and the lack of sunlight is that he’s alone. He gets halfway through a frown before his brain helpfully supplies the information that Eddie started running track towards the end of high school and really liked it, so much that he started running in the morning before school. And Richie exhales because, right, that makes sense. There was no way he had those legs at this age without some sort of regular exercise, which is probably what he’s off doing now.

He takes a long shower, listening to sounds of people talking downstairs, clearly on the same sleep schedule as Richie. They were going to spend today figuring out plans for what comes next—nobody’s staying in Derry, obviously, but nobody wants to spend any more time not being in touch. They’re all in agreement about that. Yesterday there was already talk of meetups on both the east and west coast, along with a trip down to Florida to see Mike once he gets settled. Richie always hated traveling for work, but he’s starting to get the feeling that he might like it this time around. 

After his shower he ambles down into the kitchen, poking his head into the fridge in search of breakfast. Just as he’s debating between a dubious yogurt and nothing, Ben comes in.

“Hey Rich,” he says, looking tired. “Mike went out to grab us some coffee and actual food from his place, he should be back soon.”

“Oh, sweet.”

“Yeah, I tried to make coffee using the machine and Eddie wouldn’t let me, said it looked unsanitary or something.”

Richie smiles. “Yeah, I think he said that yesterday, too.” Maybe it was the day before. 

“He—did Eddie try to make coffee last night?” Ben doesn’t look convinced. 

Well, maybe he was too busy making googly eyes at Bev when it happened. Richie sighs. “No, in the morning. Is he around?”

Ben pulls another face, opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, then evidently drops it. Eventually, he settles on a noncommittal, “Yeah, I think I saw him.” And Richie wants to ask Ben what’s going on but then, as if summoned, Eddie walks into the room.

“Jesus, finally,” he says, crossing his arms, “did you use up Derry’s entire hot water supply?”

“Eds,” Richie says, and tries to say, “hey,” but Eddie is cutting him off before he can get the word out.

“Don’t call me Eds,” he snaps. Yeah, _snaps._

Richie blinks hard. Oh. Now this is not good. This is _wrong._ “Sorry?” he says, lacking other words. Eddie is looking half confused, half offended, and decidedly unstabbed. He registers the lack of bandage on his cheek and nearly throws up as the final piece of the puzzle slides into place.

He does not want to ask the question. The last thing he wants to do is ask the question. He asks it anyway. “What are we doing today?” He says weakly, eyes fluttering shut. _It’s not real,_ his brain suggests. _We tried that one already, remember?_ he shoots back.

Ben frowns. “Mike said he wants to take us through getting ready for the ritual.”

“We did that yesterday!” He doesn’t mean to yell it, but he does. Eddie and Ben both flinch back. And here’s the thing: Richie knows. He knows his friends no idea what he’s talking about. He knows _their_ version of yesterday included flying in from wherever their lives had them end up (Eddie from New York and Ben from Suffolk; they’d talked last night about doing Thanksgiving in Manhattan together, they’d looked at _flight schedules,_ dammit) and having a very bad time at the Chinese place. He knows this.

But Richie is _tired._

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he says when Eddie and Ben continue to look at him in stunned silence. “What, yesterday we went to the Jade?” It’s a lot meaner than he intends, but he can’t stop himself. Every second he spends thinking about it just makes him more angry. “Had some fucked up fortune cookies and found out Stan offed himself? Is that what we did yesterday?”

“Um, yeah?” Ben says carefully.

“You don’t have to say it like _that,”_ Eddie adds, tone almost joking but still with an undertone of concern. It makes Richie want to slam his own head into the fridge.

“Actually, I do! I do have to say it like that because I’ve already lived through this day two fucking times! And I don’t really wanna do it again because, spoiler alert, it fucking sucks!”

At this, Bill, Bev, and Mike rush into the kitchen, eyes wide and questioning. 

“Richie, what’s wrong?” Mike asks, setting down two massive thermoses and a bag of bagels. Eddie huffs and grabs one of the thermoses, pouring its contents out into an empty mug and slamming it back immediately. 

“He’s losing it already,” he explains unhelpfully.

Bev doesn’t acknowledge Eddie’s comment. “Richie, did you say you’ve lived through this day already?” She looks deeply worried, bringing a hand up to fiddle with her necklace as she stares at Richie.

He sighs. Last time, he didn’t tell them. And obviously, that didn’t work. _Fuck it._ “Yeah, twice.”

Bill frowns. “Well, w-what happened?” 

The assorted shock-fueled chatter falls silent at that, all eyes on Richie again. He shrugs, shaking his head. How the _fuck_ is he supposed to explain this and not sound like an absolute crazy person? “Uh,” he starts elegantly, anger suddenly fading and giving away to… nerves? Jesus christ. “We went to the clubhouse? Got, like, the tokens or whatever and met up at the library to—oh, I killed Bowers, um, but before that he stabbed Eddie-”

Eddie sputters. “He fucking what?”

“Bowers? Like, Bowers?” Ben brings a hand up to his stomach. 

Bev looks like she’s barely listening. “Tokens,” she mutters.

“Richie, what? We’re gonna need you to s-slow down,” Bill says then, getting stuck on the _s_ and rolling his eyes mid sentence. Mike nods in agreement, hesitant. They all look overwhelmed. At least there’s one thing they’re all on the same page about! 

Richie closes his eyes tight, trying to remember who knows what, at this point. His brain hurts. “Okay, uh, yeah, sorry. Bowers is still alive, apparently.”

“And he _stabbed_ me?”

He waves a hand dismissively. “Yeah, but just in the face, you were fine.”

Eddie’s eyes go wide and he shakes his head, scoffing as he brings his mug up to his lips for another sip. Richie thinks he hears him muttering _just in the face, you were fine,_ sarcastically but Mike speaks up before he can tune in fully.

“And the ritual?” He looks intense, hopeful. If Richie had seen Mike look like this two days ago, he’d think exactly what he thought at the Jade: _this guy is way too invested in this shit._ But now? Knowing what he knows? Knowing what _happens?_ Richie feels a pang of sadness go through him at the pure, quiet desperation of it all. When he first found out the ritual was bullshit he was _pissed_ at Mike. But now he knows that he really, truly believed it would work if the rest of them believed, too. 

Fuck. 

“Yeah, we, uh, we beat It,” he says, avoiding the question, “both times—I mean, yeah, okay, both times. Eddie died the first time, though.” 

Eddie does another double take, putting the attention on him again as he slams his mug on the counter and splashes coffee everywhere, but not before Richie catches Bev’s eyes go wide, squint in concentration, then go wide again. 

“What the fuck! Why is it always me?”

“I mean, it wasn’t _always_ you. Bowers tried to kill Mike—hence, me killing him—and Bill had to like, drown his brother and shoot his younger self or some shit. Bev got drenched in blood, Ben got buried alive—nobody had fun, I promise. Even the kid from the restaurant died.” They all stare at him in muted horror, Bill actually recoiling back slightly.

“Oh, fuck off,” Eddie says, “That’s stupid. Obviously you’re just messing with us.”

He does have a point: it sounds very, very stupid. Richie sighs. “Listen, man.” 

“I’m listening,” he says, like a little shit, nearly cutting him off. 

Richie resists the urge to roll his eyes. Not that this was ever fun, but fuck, it’s starting to not feel fun anymore. On any other day he’d jump at the chance to banter aimlessly with Eddie—but on this day, particularly, it just makes him want to grab Eddie by the shoulders and tell him to shut the fuck up, and not in a flirty way. _You’re in love with me, idiot! You told me yourself!_ It’s frustrating and the helpless feeling quickly builds, chest tightening as he searches desperately for some magical key word that will make the losers just believe him and not ask any more questions. There are probably a few—things revealed yesterday (and the day before) that could shut them up on the spot, things that Richie couldn’t possibly know unless he’s telling the truth, which he _is._

But, there are two issues with this. One: he’s not that mean, and he won’t go and say shit like Ben’s feelings for Bev or Mike’s phony ritual unless he absolutely needs to. And he could say _his_ thing, which, by necessity is jointly Eddie’s thing, but that brings us to issue number two: he’s not that brave. 

Not now, not today. Not before everything that happens, happens.

They’re all looking at him, waiting. All except for Bev, who’s leaning against the counter, back from the rest of them, staring at the floor seemingly deep in thought. 

“Richie,” Mike says, and it sounds like he’s done the math. Richie gives him a look like, _dude, not now,_ and runs a hand down his face. 

“Alright,” he decides. If he really is in this thing, then it doesn’t matter if he fucks it up, right? He’ll just wake up today, tomorrow, and he can try again? “I first lived today, two days ago. We went to the clubhouse, got the tokens for the ritual, and went to Neibolt. We fought it and won, but Eddie died. I went to bed that night and woke up yesterday, but it was that day again. Today, whatever. We did the exact same shit but I made sure Eddie didn’t die, and we—we were fine, whatever, and we—uh, I went to bed again and I woke up and now it’s now. Again.”

There’s a moment of digestive silence and then Eddie laughs, dumping his coffee in the sink and pacing out of the kitchen. “This is bullshit,” he says, throwing his hands up, “This is bullshit!”

Richie isn’t normally one for dramatics, but this really is like a dagger to the heart. What the fuck happened to Eddie “I’m with Richie” Kaspbrak? “Eds,” he pleads, shouldering past an open-mouthed Bill to follow him out of the kitchen. 

Eddie spins around at the exact moment Richie reaches out, accidentally grabbing his arm. Eddie freezes. “I said don’t call me that,” he says weakly, eyes flying down to Richie’s hand.

He drops it, out of reflex. _Do not fucking touch me,_ Eddie’s adolescent voice screams in his mind at the exact same time as he hears last night’s confession, _I thought about breaking my other arm just so you would touch me again._ Richie’s mind spins and he feels nauseous. “Eddie, come on.” It’s almost a whisper, his voice nearly cracking halfway through.

Richie clears his throat and Eddie’s head snaps back up, expression wounded and vulnerable just for a second before he shakes it off—literally shaking his head, forehead scrunching up as he squeezes his eyes shut—and comes back angry again. “This isn’t fucking groundhog day, Richie. That bit wasn’t funny when you did it the first time and it isn’t funny now,” he spits, pulling his arm close to his chest.

He’s confused for a second but then another memory comes rushing back to him, giving context to Eddie’s nonsense accusation. _Right._ They saw _Groundhog Day_ when it came out in theatres and Eddie _hated it._ Said he’d rather die than take Phil’s place. Richie spent the entire next week bribing the other losers (comics, candy, homework—literally anything they wanted) to go in on a prank with him to convince Eddie he was stuck in a time loop, just like the movie. It was a _wild_ success, and he one hundred percent would have gotten a black eye for his troubles hadn’t it been for Stan literally holding Eddie back when Richie finally broke.

“I’m not doing a bit,” he says. “Don’t you think I’d have done a little more preparation if this was a bit?”

“Well, you don’t write your own material, so.” Eddie crosses his arms like he’s just proved something. Richie doesn’t know if he wants to smack Eddie, or himself. He knows he just got Eddie to open up, like, twelve hours ago or whatever the fuck, but jesus is it annoying to see him with his walls up like this again. He tries to hold onto the annoyed feeling so that he doesn’t focus too hard on how deeply, deeply upset he is by all of this. 

Richie rolls his eyes and turns away from Eddie, back to face the rest of the losers. Bill’s wandered off somewhere, and Ben is busying himself with divvying up the coffee from Mike’s thermoses into mugs, forehead creased in worry. Bev is leaning with her elbows on the counter, still deep in thought, look on her face mirroring Ben’s. Mike is looking at Richie weirdly, like he’s trying to get a read on him without being obvious about it. 

This is all great. Just fucking great. Richie throws his head back, letting his eyes fall shut. _What the fuck am I supposed to do now?_

**Good question, Rich. Let's decide for him. What _is_ he supposed to do now?**

**>[Talk to Mike about the ritual.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184709#workskin)**

**>[See what's up with Bev.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184757#workskin)**


	5. feels bad, todd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Richie says, shaking off the urge. _Tomorrow,_ he promises himself. He has all the time in the world, no need to do it when they’re both reeking of sewage. That’s not really the first kiss Richie—or Eddie, most definitely—has in mind. “Let’s keep going.”

“Okay,” Eddie says simply, not questioning it further. And maybe it’s just the shit on his glasses, but Richie almost swears that he sees Eddie’s smile drop just a bit as they walk on, catching up with the rest of the group. 

The quarry is about as gross as they remember, but that doesn’t stop them from splashing around like idiots. It’s an eventful few hours: Richie loses his glasses, twice, and Bev finds them, twice; Mike unloads the most detailed plan for a cross-country road trip (ending in Florida, of course) that Richie’s ever heard in his life; Eddie convinces himself he’s contracted three separate kinds of infections in his face and sits on a rock for an hour; and Bill tries to start a panel on whether he should divorce his wife or not.

“Can I get in on this divorce thing?” Eddie calls out from his rock as soon as the discussion kicks up. 

They swim over to the shore and drag themselves out of the water. Bev gives Eddie a high five. “Divorce club!”

Richie tries not to react as Eddie explains himself. “Obviously I forgot what happened to me with my mom and everything when I was a kid, but now that I remember…” he trails off, biting his lip thoughtfully. 

“Gazebos,” Bill supplies, earning a smile or two. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “that, and just. Everything else she, uh, did, I guess. And I’m not saying that Myra is my mom, but. She kind of does some of the same things? And I don’t. Hm. I don’t really like her?” He says it like a question, but as it hangs in the air he starts nodding. “Yeah, I don’t like my wife. Is that bad?”

Bev puts a hand on his knee. “Eddie, you should like the person you’re married to.”

“Like, as a rule? Do most people like their spouses?”

“Eddie,” Mike and Ben say in tandem, frowning. 

“Well, I don’t like mine because he’s a piece of shit, but I think generally, yes, Eddie.”

There’s hums of agreement all around and Eddie nods sagely. For a second Richie thinks he might be gearing up to get into it—which, honestly, he’s not sure if he’s in the headspace to handle right now, or ever, because even if it’s in a negative light he really doesn’t think he’s going to be able to sit here and listen to Eddie talk about being married; Richie personally has been blocking out that little tidbit of his life ever since he learned it two days ago—but then he nods again, this time with conviction, and says, “Okay, yeah. Divorce club,” and apparently that’s the end of that. 

They walk themselves home from the quarry not too long after that, the rest of the day spent lounging around the townhouse. Richie might’ve thought they’d all want some time to rest and process by themselves—shutting himself in his room was certainly the first thing _he_ did yesterday—but this time around it’s different. He can tell them none of them really want to leave any of the others, like an invisible force tethering them together once more, stronger after being broken once before. 

They eventually settle down in the living room, properly catching each other up on their lives, full of tangents and stories without any sort of dread looming over them like it had at the Jade. Bill tells them about his wife starring in his movies, and, naturally, brings up the divorce thing again. Richie pretends not to notice Eddie staying quiet. He also pretends to know what the fuck he’s talking about when he tells Bill that he should follow his heart. Some mighty big words coming from Richie, all things considered. Hey, he’s _trying._ He can follow his own advice tomorrow. It’s been a big day already, he doesn’t need to push it.

He pretends not to notice Eddie staring at him when he talks of hearts and marriage.

They go to bed early. Richie falls asleep quickly, and thinking of Eddie. It’s not unlike how he normally falls asleep—this is something he realizes just before he drifts off. It’s never been remarkable but it’s always been there: the last little release before he falls asleep, like a soft exhale not of the lungs but the heart, his soul smiling as it slips out of this life and back into something else, something familiar, something he can never quite remember in the morning. 

All these years, he’d never given it much thought. Now it seems so obvious that it’s Eddie that he’s been missing—that’s been missing from him. But, not entirely. The clown could take his entire life away from him, but he could never _completely_ erase Eddie out of Richie. It could scrub his mind clean, sure, but evidently It couldn’t get at his soul, or his heart, or whatever part of him housed the love he had for Eddie, like an instinct, as easy and inseparable from who he is as knowing how to blink, or breathe, or fall asleep.

He falls asleep quickly, and thinking of Eddie.

He wakes up hungover. 

The room is bathed in a pre-dawn blue, and there are voices downstairs. 

Richie thinks, _oh, I definitely don’t have to be conscious right now,_ and falls asleep once more. Some time later, he is shaken awake by a strong hand and a hushed voice. 

“Hey, Rich, it’s time to get up. We have a lot to do today,” says the voice—Mike, Richie is pretty sure. 

He groans, rolling away from the contact. “It’s like, five am, man. Give me another few hours.” He hears Mike laugh and tries to swat him away. No one should be allowed to sound that pleasant at ass ‘o clock. He sits up. “What more is there even to do, anyway?” 

Mike quirks an eyebrow, then laughs again, this time a little uncomfortable. “Well, uh, everything?”

He tries and fails to rack his brain for something they talked about yesterday that would warrant a big fat _everything_ on today’s to-do list. Something churns sourly in his gut.

“Richie, I know last night was kind of crazy. But if you just—if you just let me show you, you and the others, you’ll see that this time we can kill It once and for all.” He’s leaning forward slightly, almost in an on-guard way, as if he’s expecting Richie to make a run for it. “But we need to get started today, as soon as possible.”

Slowly, it all registers.

“No, we did that yesterday.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he knows. Before Mike even hears them, frowns at him, he knows. 

He doesn’t give Mike a chance to respond before he’s tearing the blanket off and bounding out of bed. “We did that—we already did that yesterday! _And_ the day before!” He throws his arms around, pacing at the foot of the bed while Mike watches on in like a deer in the headlights. “Fuck—no, fuck you, fuck this, I’m not—this isn’t happening,” he decides, and storms out of the room, Mike on his heels. 

“Richie!” 

“No way man, fuck you and fuck your phony ritual. I’m not doing that shit a third time.” He doesn’t mean to be as much of a bitch as he is, but it just peels out of him, unfiltered. He can barely conceive how _angry_ he is, his hand shaking as it grips the banister for support. _There is no fucking way this is happening,_ he thinks. _No fucking way. I did it right, I saved him, this isn’t happening._

He nearly crashes right into Ben, standing at the foot of the steps. “What isn’t happening? Who did you save?” he asks, eyes wide in concern. His arms are spread wide, hands held on either side of the stairwell and blocking Richie’s exit.

“Move,” he says, pushing past Ben, “it doesn’t matter. I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

“Richie!” A chorus of voices call his name and he spins around in the hallway to face everyone: Mike hovering at the landing of the stairs, Ben in front of him. Bev perks up from her armchair down the hall, and Bill and Eddie emerge from the kitchen, bumping shoulders as they try to get through the entryway at the exact same time. They all wait expectantly.

Richie explodes. “Fuck you guys! I’ve already done this shit twice! I’m sorry but I’m _not_ doing it again. I’m out!”

There’s a beat of weird, echoey silence and then Eddie tilts his head, annoyed, and says, “What the fuck do you mean you’ve already done this twice? We only fought It _once_ when we were kids.”

Richie barks a short, deranged laugh. _Good for you, Eds, you know how to count! Congratulations on passing kindergarten math!_ “Well _I,”_ he starts, dragging out the _I_ into several syllables and poking a finger into his own chest, “am in some sort of fucking _time loop,_ that—that, fucking, _ugh!”_ He lets out a shout of rage and does a little shake instead of punching the ugly wallpaper. He feels possessed, or insane. The others look at him in a way that very much communicates they share that sentiment. “I don’t know!” he admits, throwing his arms up in the air to indicate as much. “I don’t know. Two days ago it was today and yesterday it was today but now _today_ it’s today and I don’t know what the _fuck_ is going on but I _don’t_ wanna do it anymore, I—I don’t wanna do it! I’m not gonna do it!”

He’s pretty much completely lost it now. He feels like he’s collapsing inwards on himself, chorus of _what the fuck_ on repeat in his mind. None of this makes sense—and maybe it could, if he could explain it right then the losers would clue in and they could help him figure it out. But he’s way past that, at this point, because words are not happening and his friends are not on his side and saving Eddie _didn’t fucking work._

He doesn’t even realize he’s at the door and putting on his jacket until he hears Eddie calling his name.

“Richie!” he yells. It’s a bit breathless, and more than a bit hurt sounding. It’s almost enough to make Richie turn around. It would be enough to make him stay, if he did.

But he doesn’t, so it’s not.

He grabs the door handle and turns it without another look back, and adds this one to the list of times he was too afraid to face that thing quietly boiling inside of him.

(And, only an afterthought floating in the muck of _almosts:_ last time, staying didn’t work. Maybe leaving will.)

**Where should Richie go?**

**>[Straight to the fuckin' ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184802#workskin)** [ **airp**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184802#workskin) **[ort.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184802#workskin) **

**>[Drive around town to think things over and calm down.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184790#workskin) **


	6. Mike Hanlon Love Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

Richie sighs.  _ Might as well get this part over with.  _ He doesn’t  _ want  _ to crush the hopes and dreams Mike’s spent twenty seven years carefully building up, but. What is he supposed to do, just let him keep believing in it when Richie knows it’s futile? If the others deserved to know the truth, then Mike does, too. 

He gives Mike a look and tilts his head towards the stairs.

“You said we beat It both times,” he says once the door to Richie’s room is closed behind them, “so the ritual? It worked?” And he’s sporting that hopeful look again, which makes it so much worse for Richie to say what he’s about to say.

“Listen, Mikey,” he starts, running a hand down his face, “it’s not your fault.”

And maybe he already knew it, deep down, but this is all Mike needs to crumble. “But if we all believed—if, if we—”

“We did, Mike, we really did. You made us believe, you did everything you possibly could have. Both times.” Richie hates this, he hates every part of this. Forget about deserving to know the truth, what about deserving to live in ignorant bliss? Why is he taking  _ that  _ away from Mike?

Mike studies the floor intently. “What happened?” he asks quietly, resigned.

Richie sighs, sitting down on the bed and patting the space beside him. Mike hesitates for a second but joins him anyway. Richie rests a hand on his shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “You took us to the clubhouse and told us we needed to find our tokens for the ritual. After that we all split up and got our tokens, then we met you at the library. That’s when Bowers tried to kill you, so I, uh. Axed him? Like with an axe?”

Mike widens his eyes. “Thanks, Richie,” he says, almost a laugh. 

Richie smiles. “Yeah, I mean, no problem. I kind of threw up on you after, so don’t thank me too much. Uh, after that we went to Neibolt, ‘cause Bill was already on the way there by himself, I think ‘cause that kid from the restaurant died and he ended up living at Bill’s old place so he was like, projecting about Georgie—anyway, we went down into the well—well first we found Stan’s head in a freezer, but, um. We went down the well and did the ritual with the fire and the turn light into dark and all that, but, uh.”

“What happened?”

“I’m sorry, Mike,” Richie says, watching the way his friend’s face drops and cursing the universe for making him be the one that has to do this. “It didn’t work,” he settles on, deciding that the specifics aren’t necessary. Or hoping, at least.

Mike takes a minute to think about this. Richie spends that minute praying to whoever the fuck is listening that he won’t push, won’t make Richie tell him all the awful details. But that’s never been Mike’s style—sure, he dwells, maybe more than any of them, but he doesn’t sit there and demand answers like the rest of them, screaming at the sky or each other like they did when they were kids. No, Mike has always been the kind to keep his head down, to work hard and find his own answers, not asking anyone to come along with him. He’s carried this torch for so long, so alone—and it’s not the losers’ fault, they didn’t ask to forget when they left Derry, and they’re here now—but he chose to do this by himself all these years, to not call them back until it was time. 

How many times did he almost pick up the phone? How many times did he wait patiently for a letter or a call, losing a little bit more hope each time one of them moved away? When did he figure out that leaving Derry made them forget? How long did he think it was his fault? Richie can almost see it written on his face, decades of hope suddenly crashing down on him, amounting to nothing. 

He wants to puke. He wants to kick his two days ago self in the nuts for having even a modicum of anger for Mike down in the cistern. He’s been off living the life of a moderately successful, moderately unhappy comedian for the past thirty years—it’s certainly not a kickass life, or the one he imagined for himself as a kid (he knows now that he imagined himself  _ wildly  _ successful and moderately  _ happy,  _ but more than that he imagined himself with the losers, the seven of them never leaving each other’s sides)—but it certainly beats voluntarily staying in Derry, fucking  _ Derry,  _ dedicating his life to finding out how to kill the alien demon clown that terrorized him and all his friends, and then having that life of work turn out to be for shit. 

Mike did that. Mike did that for  _ them. _

Richie turns and pulls him into a tight hug, muttering  _ it’s okay _ into his shoulder. He doesn’t comment on Mike’s sniffling or the shake of his shoulders, just holds him tighter and vows to never complain about having to promote his tour ever again. 

After a while, Mike pulls away and wipes at his eyes, clearing his throat. “I’m sorry, Rich.”

“Don’t, Mikey, hey. You have nothing to apologize for. You were just doing what you thought would save us. You did nothing wrong,” he assures, “Okay, look, if you want something to feel bad about, feel bad about stealing from the Native Americans. That wasn’t cool.”

Mike gives a watery laugh. “Yeah, that really wasn’t, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t. But everything else was just you trying to protect us, and we could never be mad at you for that.”

Mike nods, but he doesn’t look like he really believes it. He opens his mouth and closes it a few times, like he’s trying to figure out where to go from here. “Was it the same both times?” he asks then.

It’s not what Richie’s expecting. “What do you mean?”

“What happened with the ritual, the tokens, everything. Did you change anything the second time?”

_ Oh.  _ “Yeah, I—Eddie died the first time, and then the loop started, so I thought that maybe he was the key. I tried to do everything the exact same the second time, except I pushed him out of the way when he was gonna die like the first time. Other than that, no, nothing was different.”

Mike nods thoughtfully, looking just as lost in all this as Richie feels. He seems to accept his words at face value, though, which is an overwhelming relief. Maybe it took a bit to get there, but  _ this  _ is what he expected from the losers. Ride or die, baby.

“And how did we beat It?” Mike asks, back to business. 

“We bullied It to death?” he says, already cringing at how stupid it sounds. Mike just raises his eyebrows. Richie fights the urge to roll his eyes and continues. “We, like—oh, actually, okay, you  _ were  _ right about some of the ritual stuff. All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit?” Mike perks up. “Yeah, that’s legit. We made him small by screaming shit at him like he wasn’t scary or whatever. He like, shrunk down and we crushed his heart. It was kinda gross.” 

“Okay,” Mike says, “okay. That… that works, I guess.” He looks better now, light back in his eyes as he nods fervently over at Richie, bouncing them on the mattress a little. Richie smiles.

“Yeah, so, that’s not really a problem. We have that covered. It’s just…” he trails off and Mike picks his thought right up.

“You’re still stuck.”

“Yeah.” He sighs, flopping back on the bed. He definitely feels better about the whole ritual thing now, but now that that’s resolved he’s back to square one. “I don’t know. I have no idea what the fuck is going on or how to fix it.”

“We can talk to the others,” Mike offers quietly, and Richie scoffs. 

“Yeah, okay. Did you hear Eddie? He thought I was just doing a  _ bit,”  _ he says bitterly. He’s aware that this is approaching the territory of a teenage girl lying on her bed whining about boy problems to her best friend—hell, it isn’t even approaching, it’s  _ there— _ but he can’t find it in himself to care. That shit fucking hurt. 

Mike gives him an oddly knowing look, cautious but also a little exasperated, and Richie wonders if he somehow knows. “Yeah, I heard. He was wrong, though, it was definitely funny the first time around,” he says, looking at Richie pointedly until he cracks a smile. 

“God, I’m pretty sure I gave Stan my  _ Uncanny X-Men  _ for that. Shit’s worth a fucking fortune, now.”

“Oh, I remember that,” Mike says, smile faraway and fond. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m pretty sure he told me he was on board before you even tried to bribe us.”

Richie sits up. “That little shit!” He frowns then, looking up at the ceiling. “Sorry buddy,” he says, then turns back to Mike. “Speaking ill of the dead is generally frowned upon, right? I don’t need any more reasons for the universe to screw me over.”

Mike raises his eyebrows, nodding. “‘Course not, Rich.”

He sighs. “Stan would know what to do.”

They share a quiet moment, both lost in their own reflection. After a minute, Mike gives a soft, sad, “Yeah, he would.” The two of them sigh in tandem, then Mike moves to stand. “Alright, should we give them a try? I know they’re…” he trails off, looking unsure all of a sudden. “It might be hard. Last night was…”

“Fuck last night,” Richie says, standing, “we made an oath. That shit is forever, man. Once a loser, always a loser. If they forgot that, we’ll make sure they pull their heads out of their asses and then we’ll figure this shit out together.” He feels some sort of fire igniting in him, burning through to his fingertips.  _ Fuck this.  _ They  _ are  _ going to figure this out. They’re going to kill It and break the loop. 

And Eddie’s gonna stop being a little shit and own up to his fucking feelings.

Mike smiles like he’s about to cry. “Alright.”

“Alright, let’s do this.”

And because this is Derry, they don’t even get all the way down the stairs before shit turns sideways.

Bev is already making her way up, relief flooding her face when she sees Richie and Mike. “Guys,” she says, eyes wide with panic, “Bill took off and Eddie’s trying to leave, too. Ben’s talking him down right now but I don’t think it’s helping.” Richie and Mike share a look like,  _ are you fucking kidding me?  _

Bev is biting her lip, nails tapping out a nervous rhythm on the banister. “What do we do?”

**What should Richie do?**

**>[Try to go find Bill.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185024#workskin) **

**>[Try to talk to Eddie.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59184967#workskin) **


	7. bev knows what's going on. she doesn't know bc she did. no she doesn't❤️

Richie gives Mike an apologetic look like, _in a minute,_ then sighs and turns to Bev. “Got any smokes?”

There’s a beat where the question just hangs there unacknowledged before she blinks and looks up. “Hm?”

 _Yeah, there’s definitely something up here._ “I said, ‘got any smokes?’” 

“Oh,” she says, “oh, yeah. Sorry.” She gets up and gives him an odd smile as she brushes past him, heading down the hallway towards the front door. 

It’s not until they’re sat on the front steps of the townhouse that Richie realizes he has absolutely no idea what he’s even looking to get out of Bev here. What is he gonna say, _hey, you looked very weird and spacey when I told everyone I’ve already lived through today?_ Yeah, that’ll work. 

For now, he settles on smoking in silence, listening to the distant sound of cars going by. He watches Bev’s face for any semblance of a clue that she might have some idea of what’s going on. But she’s always been hard to read, and evidently that hasn’t changed. She’s sitting on one of the lower steps, leaning back with her arm propped up on one of the higher ones. Something about it tickles the back of Richie’s mind, but he can’t figure out what.

“It makes sense now,” Bev says a couple minutes later, once her cigarette is stubbed out on the step beside her. Richie waits for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t.

“What makes sense now?” he asks carefully.

She frowns, but she doesn’t look scared anymore. Just sad. “The deadlights,” she says, finally meeting Richie’s eyes. “I saw—in my dreams, I saw us all dying, but not here. In the deadlights, I… I forgot. I can’t believe I forgot.”

She shakes her head like shes ashamed and goes to light another cigarette, sitting up and resting her elbows on her knees. Richie scoots down a step so that they’re on the same eye level. “Bev, we all forgot,” he assures, not believing that she’s really blaming herself right now for any of this.

She nods. She knows he’s right, she has to know. “I know, I just. I think I saw this, in the deadlights.”

“This?”

“The whole… thing, with this day happening more than once. I saw Mike getting killed by Bowers, in the library.” She looks to Richie as if for confirmation.

“Yeah, it was in the library,” he says, a little bit breathless. _Holy shit._ “Wait, but he didn’t die. I got Bowers before he could get Mike, both times.”

Bev’s eyes widen just a bit and she takes a long drag of her cigarette. Richie can tell that she’s holding something back, that she doesn’t really want to tell Richie everything. He can’t say that he blames her—he was only in the deadlights for a couple seconds, but it felt like _hours,_ like time didn’t exist. And it was fucking terrifying. He wouldn’t want to relive it, so it’s not a surprise that she doesn’t.

But still, he needs absolutely all the help he can get right now. 

“Then I guess you don’t get to him, in one of the other ones,” she says, oddly resigned, as if at this point she’s completely used to the idea of her friends dying. Also: _one of the other ones._ Richie realizes then that she’s seen it all.

“Bev, I need you to be straight with me here,” he says, trying not to sound desperate as he swivels his legs so that his body is facing hers. She stays facing forward but lets her eyes drift to his, guilty. “What did you see?”

She sighs and a tear falls from her eye, hand moving up to wipe it almost immediately. “I saw us dying,” she says, “I saw… Richie, I don’t—I don’t know, it’s not like, like, a movie. It was just flashes.”

She’s crying in earnest now. Richie goes to put an arm around her and freezes just as she flinches, barely. _Right,_ he remembers. He wonders if he’s ever going to stop remembering, if there’s ever going to be a limit to the things he forgot. He suddenly feels like crying, too.

“It’s okay,” he says, putting his hands awkwardly in his lap, “you don’t—we don’t have to talk about this, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to figure it out.”

She nods, sniffling thickly. “I know,” she says, “I just, I don’t know. All I know is that it felt like more than one day. I never understood why, but, now…” she trails off, putting out her second cigarette. “Richie, I think you might only be at the start of this.”

“Okay,” he says numbly, automatically taking that information and filing it away for later without even processing it. Most of him doesn’t want to believe it, but there’s a part of him—a small part, but still a part—that already knows this. He knew it the minute he woke up alone this morning. Because if saving Eddie and making good on a lifetime of suffering in silence wasn’t what the universe wanted Richie to do with his second chance, then he has no fucking clue what it wants.

“And the ritual,” Bev starts again, wiping the rest of her tears.

“Is fake, I know,” Richie says. “It’s not his fault, I think he really believes it’s going to work.”

Bev gives him a sad smile, like she knows something he doesn’t. “We’ll find a way to save him,” she says, and at first Richie thinks she means Mike, which doesn’t make sense. But then: “I saw some other things, too,” she admits, lips pressed together tight like she’s suppressing a smile. 

Richie doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry. “What?” he tries.

Bev rolls her eyes. “Okay, whatever, we don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to,” she says, “but I’m just—it’s not your fault he died, the first time.”

“I never—”

“In the cistern, right? The claw, after you were in the deadlights?”

Richie blanches. “What, with colonel Mustard?” he jokes weakly, crossing his arms defensively. After a beat, he caves and says, “Yeah, it was that one.”

“Sorry, just want to make sure we’re on the same page,” she says, smiling again like they’re both in on the joke. That is, if you count trauma bonding over killer clowns as a joke. “I just want you to know, it’s not your fault. It’s not going to be your fault, for any of them.”

Richie’s eyes widen right at the same time as hers, him realizing that this means Eddie’s probably going to die a lot, and her realizing that she just told him Eddie’s going to die a lot.

“I’m sorry,” she says immediately, softly, one hand going to cover her mouth and the other on Richie’s knee. 

“It’s fine,” he breathes, swallowing thickly. “It’s fine, I-” he’s about to say _I don’t want to talk about it,_ but instead what comes out is this: “I told him, last night. Um, how I felt—feel.”

A smile freezes halfway on her face. “And?”

“I mean, it’s mutual, I guess,” he says, closing his eyes at Bev’s sudden excitement. “But then this morning, he just…” he racks his brain for a way to finish that sentence, Eddie’s blatant rejection replaying in his mind. _He just brushed me off like I was a crazy person and accused me of doing a bit? He just acted like he can’t stand me and gave me emotional whiplash?_

“Oh, Richie,” she says, giving his knee a squeeze. “You know he’s crazy about you, he always has been. He’s just scared.” She opens her mouth and then tilts her head like she’s deciding whether she wants to say something or not. She looks at Richie and evidently he looks pathetic and sad enough for her to give him this. “And besides, I heard him on the phone arguing with his wife last night. That’s not a happy marriage.”

Oh, right, the wife. Richie groans.

“That was supposed to make you feel better,” Bev offers softly.

“I know,” he says, letting his head fall back on the concrete. “I know, it’s fine. He told us all it was a loveless marriage, anyway.” Bev hums quietly and Richie sits up. “Which, by the way. You need to leave your husband. He’s vile and you deserve to be with someone who knows what love actually is, like—” He stops himself before he can say _Ben._

Bev blinks a couple of times, then says, “like who?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

_“Richie."_

“I promise, like, _today._ C’mon, red, don’t make me expose him like that.”

Bev smiles. “So it’s one of them?”

“Now, I didn’t—”

“You’re full of shit, Tozier,” she says, crossing her arms. “Is it—okay, at least tell me this. Is it the person who wrote me that postcard? That summer we all met?”

Richie lets out a long, long sigh. “Mhm.”

Bev smiles fondly, bringing one hand up to rest her chin on. “Alright.” She doesn’t push it any further. Richie hopes he hasn’t ruined it by telling her it’s coming.

“Hey, Bev?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m serious. When this is over, I’ll go back to New York with you to get your stuff. You’re not staying with that shitbag for one more day.” He gives her a hard look, one that says _this isn’t a suggestion._

She gives him a sigh, a smile, and a _thanks,_ and shortly after that they decide to head back inside and try to get through the day without letting anyone die. 

Everyone is already gathered in the sitting room when they get in, waiting anxiously. Mike stands as soon as they appear.

“Look, you guys, we can still get the ritual done if—”

“The ritual doesn’t work,” Richie says, ripping the bandaid right off. Everyone except Bev looks at him with varying degrees of confusion and hurt. He gives Mike an apologetic smile and tries not to look at the way his face falls, absolutely devastated. “Sorry, Mikey.”

Everyone sort of just sits there, mouths hanging open, until Eddie stands up. “What do you mean it doesn’t work? You said we did the ritual and beat It already, twice.” It’s a fair point. Richie sighs.

“Yeah, but it—it doesn’t _work,_ we did it and then the fucking clown came out anyway, and like, bitched at Mike for ‘tricking’ us,” he says, doing air quotes for good measure. He tries his best to keep his voice level; freaking out didn’t get him anywhere last time. “Anyway, then we, like. Yelled at It and it got really small and _then_ we killed It.”

Bill’s brow drops down low, skeptical. “We _yelled_ at It?”

“Yeah, like, called it stupid and a clown or whatever,” he says, already internally cringing at how stupid and unreal it sounds. He sighs and puts his hands up. “I know, guys, I know. It sounds—”

“Richie.” Bill doesn’t look angry, he looks _worried._ Richie looks to Bev for support.

“He’s telling the truth,” she says, “I’ve—I’ve seen it.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “What, suddenly she’s an oracle?”

Bev gives a look to mirror his. Richie can practically see her flipping him off, a projection of her younger self. “In the deadlights, Eddie.”

Richie seriously considers pouring himself a drink. The sun has barely risen, yes, but the concept of time is very quickly losing its standing in Richie’s mind. Eddie and Bev bicker aimlessly for another minute or two until Ben speaks up.

“Mike, you alright?” Their attention falls now to Mike, who is sitting quietly in the corner and looking not very alright. When he looks up, he looks guilty.

“I thought if we all believed…” he trails off quietly, shaking his head. “I’m sorry,” he says now, louder, looking up, “I wanted to tell you guys, I did. I—I lied, I’m sorry. The ritual… It didn’t work for the Shokopiwah, but I thought it would, for us, if we all believed it. They didn’t _believe.”_

“You were only doing what you thought was the right thing,” Bill says, standing, “and there’s no way we could ever be m-mad at you for that. Losers stick together.” Mike looks like he’s about to melt, and Bill crosses the room to wrap him in a hug. After a moment he pulls back and turns to the rest of the group, brow drawn low in determination.

Richie catches Eddie’s eye and smiles. _Time for another Bill Speech._

“Ritual or not, we made a promise,” he starts, the entire room captured already. “we made an _oath._ With—with a broken beer bottle, if I’m r-remembering that right.” He huffs a laugh as the rest of them slowly recall. Oh, to be thirteen again. “That day we said if It ever came back, we would too. We’re going to kill this thing, and for _good_ this time. For Stan, for G-” he gets stuck on the _g_ sound, voice falling into a breathy stutter as he puts his hands on his hips. “For Georgie. And for every other kid It took. And, fuck it. For _us.”_ He says it in the same way a middle aged woman might say, _what the hell, I’ll take a look at the dessert menu,_ throwing one hand up in the air with a shrug. “For all the f-fucking shit It put us through. For making us forget our lives and forget each other.”

He pauses after that and a melancholy feeling washes over the room, all of them taking it in once again that, _right,_ It robbed them of this, too. It robbed them of a lifetime of friendship and love, isolating them and making them feel lonely, and weak, when they should have been growing up by each others sides, never to be too far from comfort when things got scary again, for whatever reason. Because It knew that they were strongest when they were together. 

This time, Richie doesn’t have to be prompted to say his line.

“Let’s kill this fucking clown.”

Before they go into Neibolt, Eddie pulls Richie aside into the tall, dry grass and clears his throat, looking down at their feet. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, crossing his arms.

“What?”

Eddie’s eyes dart up, annoyed. He sighs. “I said I’m sorry,” he repeats. He’s close enough for Richie to smell the coffee on his breath—just coffee, no blood from the stab wound that doesn’t exist today. “For this morning, I mean,” Eddie continues, breaking Richie out of his daze. 

“What?” he says again, not catching on.

Eddie sighs once more. “You make this so difficult,” he mutters, quiet enough that Richie knows he doesn’t mean it, but loud enough that he knows he’s supposed to hear it. Richie smiles but tries to keep it somewhat subdued, not wanting to ruin Eddie’s momentum.

(That’s something he used to do, whenever things got too serious or real—crack a joke, break the mood, get Eddie to beep him instead of saying whatever he was going to say, whatever it was Richie was so desperately afraid of hearing.

He’s heard it all, now.)

“I’m sorry that I didn’t believe you this morning. That I acted like that, that wasn’t me,” Eddie finally says. “I don’t… like a lot of the things I’ve become. This morning was one of them.”

Oh, well that took a different turn than Richie was expecting. He offers a lame, “Eds.”

“I just—do you think it would have been different, if we’d remembered? Do you think—” he cuts himself off but Richie hears the _do you think_ we _would have been different?_ echoing all the same. 

“Maybe,” he answers softly, reaching down and grabbing one of Eddie’s hands in his. “but I guess we’ll never really get to know for sure.”

Eddie inhales—not quite sharply, not quite a normal inhale, either—but doesn’t pull away. He raises an eyebrow. “What about you, Phil Connors?”

“I said I’m reliving _this_ day over and over, not the last twenty seven years, idiot.” Richie rolls his eyes. “And for what it’s worth? I think this version of you turned out just fine.” 

And for just a second, Eddie looks like a kid again, eyes wide and searching as he takes in Richie’s words, frowning just a little bit in that way he always did when someone was too nice to him, like he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, eyes falling again to the ground, embarrassed. Richie lets go of his hand, both of them tittering awkwardly in place. “I hope I don’t die this time,” Eddie says then, laughing. 

Richie tilts his head. “Yeah, that would be preferable.”

Suddenly, there’s a different voice in the mix. “Hey!” Bev calls out from the porch, hip popped as she crosses her arms impatiently. “You two coming or what?” _Oh._ Richie realizes that they’re the only ones left outside.

“Yeah!” he calls back, turning to Eddie with a long sigh. “You feel like goin’ for a swim?”

Eddie rolls his eyes and scoffs, disgusted. “Beep beep, Richie.” He’s sort of still smiling, but it’s nervous, unsure. Richie gears up to regurgitate his _braver than you think_ speech from the first time but Eddie beats him to it, eyes already steely and determined by the time Richie opens his mouth.

They stare at each expectantly for a second, Eddie clearly thinking that Richie wants to say something and Richie already forgetting his exact words. The moment hangs there weirdly, until Eddie shakes his head in a silent _whatever._ Richie moves to take himself up the steps but Eddie grabs his arm, lightly.

“Hey,” he says, quiet, eyes darting over to Bev like he’s trying to scope out if she’s listening. Which, she definitely is, if her and Richie’s conversation this morning is any indication. “If you wake up tomorrow and it’s still today…” he trails off, face twisting up into a little frown like he’s thinking hard. 

“Eddie, what?”

If he hears Richie’s question, he doesn’t show it, features unmoving. Then, a second later, a decision: “If you wake up tomorrow and it’s still today, tell me what you think our lives would have been like if we didn’t forget.”

“And if I wake up tomorrow, and it’s tomorrow?”

“Tell me anyway.”

He thinks about it, as they make their way through the sewers—what it would have been like. He likes to think that he would’ve told Eddie how he felt. Maybe in college, even though they ended up going to different ones. If they’d stayed in touch, all of them, they definitely would have gone to the same one. All the losers would have—they knew, even when they were kids, that they were best when they were together.

He hopes they would have worked, the two of them together. He can’t imagine a world where they didn’t, where they _don’t._ He hopes they would have confessed everything to each other—sitting on the floor of one of their dorms late at night, or maybe after class one day, the first snowfall of that first year in college. Maybe on the bus. Maybe in the dining hall. Maybe by accident. Richie can imagine it a thousand different ways, a thousand different confessions tumbling out of his lips before he can shove the words back in, so much love it just has to spill over. That’s a time loop he wouldn’t mind getting stuck in.

After that they probably would have started dating. It wouldn’t be that much different than what they’ve always done, just a little louder, a little closer. Maybe they’d have a few bumps along the way, but they’d always come back to each other eventually. They’d get an apartment, get jobs, graduate. Definitely get married, even if it wasn’t legal yet. Richie thinks that would be important to Eddie—or maybe not, he doesn’t know. He didn’t get to find out. He didn’t get to find out any of it, all of this just some patchwork fantasy cobbled together with fuzzy memories and his best guesses at reading Eddie now, decades later. It’s an in-between that will never fully exist, at least not outside of his imagination.

He tries not to dwell on the insurmountable unfairness of it all. They have now, and they have after. Maybe they didn’t come back to Derry hand in hand, but they could certainly leave that way. They could beat It, get out of the sewers, and wake up tomorrow and have it be tomorrow. Richie could tell Eddie that he wouldn’t have ever let him go, and they could have all of those things they never got to have. 

And while Richie’s thinking it over, Eddie is launched into one of the walls of the cistern with a sick and deafening _crack._

There’s a strangled scream that Richie only recognizes as his own when he makes it to Eddie’s body, limp and lifeless. It is abundantly clear that he’s not alive but Richie cradles him to his chest anyway, fingers sliding horribly along the soft, crumbling portions of his skull. It feels _wrong,_ not anything close to what a head should feel like, and Richie feels his every limb give out, body collapsing on top of Eddie’s in the dirt.

If he thought Eddie dying hurt the first time, well.

There’s a vague sensation of hands on his back, digging in under his arms and trying to pull him away. He clutches Eddie tighter, kicking all the while as someone—Mike? Bill, maybe—screams at him about being out in the open.

 _Good,_ Richie thinks, _let It get me so I can just die and wake up and try again. Let me die so he can be alive again._ He feels himself being dragged along the ground, Eddie slipping out from under him. He swivels his body so that he’s face up, legs twisting and kicking out of what he can now see is Mike and Ben’s grip. 

They drop him, and he scrambles back. “Just let It get me!” he screams, “it doesn’t matter, anyway, none of it—I’m going to wake up again!”

Bev comes over to him, dropping to her knees at his feet. She pales at the sight of Eddie’s blood staining his entire body.

“Tell me you’ve seen more than this,” he says, quick and desperate, tripping over his words as he surges forward, grabbing her hand. “You’ve seen it end differently, different than this. This isn’t how it really ends.”

She nods her head weakly, tears streaming down her face. “Richie, I—”

“Then it’s fine! It’s fine, just let me die, and I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. We can figure it out, we can go through the list and—”

He feels a white-hot pain rip through his spine, pressure in his stomach screaming just for a split second before he sees a dark slurry of blood splatter onto Bev’s chest, her mouth falling open in horror.

“Richie,” she cries, hands coming up to hover beside his face as she shakes, never actually touching him. He looks down to see a thick, dark claw protruding from his stomach and realizes that this is the exact same scene from two days ago. 

“It’s okay,” he starts to say, but he’s launched across the room before he can get the words out. Just as he hits the same wall already stained with Eddie, he hears Bev scream.

And then, everything goes dark.

**Well, that sucked.**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185306#workskin) **


	8. to pluck at a pair of heartstrings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: minor substance use/abuse

He knows he’s not going to _leave,_ leave. Establishing that to himself as he sits in the parking lot is what makes him start driving, muscle memory taking over as he cruises—only a couple miles over the speed limit, thank you very much—through streets he only recognizes as familiar as he’s moving onto the next turn. 

Richie realizes, as the town flies by, that he really hasn’t thought about this place since he left. And he knows that it’s because he forgot, but really, it’s weird. It’s weird that he never bothered to wonder about where he grew up, or what his childhood was like, and it’s even weirder that he never considered it weird. It’s an uncomfortable sensation, especially as he finds himself navigating out to the far edge of town perfectly, without even thinking about it. It’s like finding out someone else lived in his body and lived half a life before he got a turn. Except, the someone else is still him, he just doesn’t remember it. But the him that’s coming back doesn’t feel like _him,_ the one driving this car right now.

And beyond that version of him, the kid that definitely existed but everyone forgot, fading into the background anyway despite his best efforts to be noticed, there’s at least two other Richies floating around out there in some version of this world. Yesterday, and the day before. The one that saved Eddie, and the one that didn’t. Do they still exist? _This_ Richie can remember them—is that enough to qualify as existing? As having existed? Is there a place where they get to live to see tomorrow, continuing on in ruin or bliss while this Richie stays stuck on repeat?

His head fucking hurts. None of this makes any sense. His mind drifts back to his friends once more. _This would be so much easier if they were stuck, too._ Not that he wants any of them to have to endure the suckfest, but _god_ would it be nice to not have to hide it or explain it or whatever the fuck he’s going to have to do tomorrow.

There’s something deep in the pit of his stomach, an uneasy feeling, that tells him this isn’t going to be a quick or easy fix.

Richie tries not to think about tomorrow, or today, or what his friends are doing right now—what they’re saying about him right now. God. He pushes it all away, letting the drive melt his brain, all his thoughts turning to static. The core of Derry falls away behind him and the sweet, earthy scent of summer wafts through his open window, warm breeze easing the frown off his face. 

At least he got stuck on a nice day. 

He finds himself pulling over at the gate of the Hanlon farm, realizing this is the smell he’d been chasing all along. It isn’t particularly good smelling, especially now that he’s found the source, but it’s _good,_ the fond nostalgia of it almost knocking him over right then and there. The air feels slower out here, calmer. He knows now that this has always been true—mornings spent helping Mike with chores, afternoons spent lying in the shade drinking lemonade—this is always where Richie felt most at peace, the one place his heartbeat was allowed to slow, iron grip that the town had on him loosening. Maybe only a little bit, but enough that Richie was able to forget. 

Forget _what,_ exactly, he can’t remember, but he knows that this was the good kind of forgetting. The kind of forgetting where the suddenly the sun is going down and you realize you’ve been hanging out all day, happy reverie too strong that it was never once broken or intruded upon by the passing of time.

All this is to say, Richie forgot how much he fucking missed this place. 

It feels the same—the air, the smell, the smooth grain of the wooden fence marking the edge of the property—but it looks different. It’s overgrown, like the grounds haven’t been tended to in at least a few years. Richie knows that Mike lives above the library now, having sold the farm to a young couple ten or so years ago, but it’s clear that no one lives here, now. The farm itself has definitely begun to show its age, wood warped and worn by weather and use, barn doors hanging crooked on their hinges. 

Richie realizes that he has no idea how old the farm is, but it has to be _old._ It definitely wasn’t new when they were kids, no matter how much it may have felt that way. Richie remembers, now, how they would spend their Friday nights holed up in one of the older barns, one the Hanlons didn’t use anymore, and eat pizza while watching movies on Bill’s old projector. 

He remembers thinking it was the _coolest fucking shit_ he’d ever done.

“Y-you’re a lifesaver, Bev,” Bill said, twenty six years ago, as he lugged the projector and all one thousand of its cords into the basket of her bike. This is before—not long before, if he’s recalling correctly—Bev’s aunt took her to Portland, barely one year at Derry High under her belt before she transferred. And it’s not like it was some kind of utopia after It; all their respective bullies still continued to torment them, but the difference then was that they had each other, all seven of them.

(At that point, they still didn’t know it would soon be six. Richie’s pretty sure they got the news only a week after their first night with the projector.)

“No worries, Denbrough,” she said, holding the handlebars tight so that nothing went toppling over. That was something she did—calling them by their last names. Richie liked it. He never heard anyone do it in real life, just in movies and TV, and he always thought it was cool. So, it made sense that Bev did it. Richie loved it from the start, the way _Tozier_ fell off her lips like it was some kind of secret, just for the two of them. She’d only call him Tozier if he wasn’t being an asshole, so getting a _Richie_ from her was always a wake-up call. 

Bill, on the other hand, was _always_ Denbrough. 

The three of them made their way to the farm slowly, Bev’s front tire wobbling more than usual under the weight of the goods in her basket. It was finally nice enough out that they could spend the night in the barn, and Richie, despite having to third wheel Bill and Bev’s awkward attempts at flirting, was jazzed. This was probably the most excited he’d ever been since his dad got him his own walkman.

The thing about the losers was this: when Richie was with them, he didn’t _feel_ like a loser. Or, rather, he didn’t care so much that they were losers. Because the things that made them losers weren’t that uncool when it was just the seven of them. And whenever he was with them, Richie knew that he could let down his guard and be himself, completely—well, on second thought, _almost_ completely, that one little thing he’d spent the last year trying to unrealize about himself excluded—and he knew that no matter how many times he got beeped that they loved him for all of it.

Lying on the patchwork of blankets decorating the barn that night, Richie knew it. He wasn’t even paying attention to the movie, so caught up in his thoughts that he could barely hear the words the characters were saying—Eddie mouthing them in time beside him, satisfied little nod telling Richie a cool speech just ended. He didn’t hear it. He was too busy having the revelation that this is what it felt like to love—to really, truly, and fully love, and to _be_ loved just the same, and that maybe that was the whole point of everything.

 _This,_ he thought, _is never going to end._

As Richie sits up on a length of fence recalling this, he hurts. It’s a different kind of hurt than the ones he’s become quickly accustomed to over the last few days, big suffocating sadness and angry, twitchy confusion. And it’s not even like the hurt he’s grown used to over the past thirty years, a low, dull ache of vague dissatisfaction and a strange sort of longing. This hurt is small, localized. It’s like pressing down on a fresh bruise.

They could have been so different. They could have been _together._

He keeps pushing on that bruise, pain blooming beneath his touch. They all could have gone to the same college—or, at least, colleges in the same city. New York, maybe. Eddie talked about that, sometimes, usually only late at night and when it was just the two of them. He said it like he thought it was crazy, but there was so much want, there in the cadence of his words, fast and fumbling like he couldn’t get them out fast enough. 

Okay, New York. The seven of them would have gone there together, maybe lived in a couple tiny apartments and saw each other every single day. Richie would have told Eddie he loved him. Casually, like over a box of Chinese takeout or something, so it didn’t feel too big. It would have probably been too big anyway. In this one Eddie feels the same, too, and they get married and have a bunch of kids that are best friends with the rest of the losers’ kids. Everyone would have been happy and well-adjusted and alive until they were old and wrinkly. And Richie would never forget what it felt like to love and be loved and he wouldn’t spend his entire life afraid, alone, and hiding.

But he did, so now he’s here, a ghost of what he could have been haunting the remains of a once promising life.

He haunts for a little while longer, making his way around the farm and letting the memories wash over him. He argues that maybe the key to this all is lingering somewhere in the untouched parts of his mind, and that he’s doing himself some good by drawing this out. But there’s no one to justify it to but himself, which really should be a sign in and of itself. Regardless—he remains for as long as he can convince himself is okay, waiting for that deep melancholy to stop weighing down on his bones. Eventually, he realizes that the feeling isn’t going anywhere, so he takes himself and his sadness and gets in his car. 

He swings by the theatre before heading back to the townhouse, grabbing his token and getting the fuck out before It can pull any more punches. He feels drained from the farm and he knows he needs to go through the least amount of bullshit possible if he wants to make it through Neibolt tonight.

He wonders what would happen if they just _didn’t._ If they just stayed at the townhouse and decided to go for It tomorrow. Would tomorrow come? Or would the universe find some other way to punish him, another horrible ending to cap off this version of today? 

Right now, it feels safest just to try again without changing too much. It feels wrong that the key would be to do it completely differently. He doesn’t know why, but he feels like it was just a little bit off the first time, like there was only one thing he needed to fix to make it perfect. But then again, saving Eddie didn’t do shit, so he really doesn’t know how this thing works after all. 

A voice, himself, in the back of his mind: _what if we just have to tell him?_ It whispers in his ear as he’s pulling back into the townhouse’s lot, loaded suggestion nearly knocking the breath out of his lungs. He came close, yesterday, on the way to the quarry. He’s come close a _lot_ of times—after school bike rides, in secluded corners of the clubhouse, in notes snatched from lockers last minute, in the stale morning breath of post-sleepover haze. It’s been on the tip of his tongue his entire life. He remembers, now, thinking that once he got a bit older, he’d get a bit braver. But Eddie was always the brave one between the two of them, and Richie could never say anything that mattered without laughing, so it always died in the space between his breaths. 

Now, though. He could do it. Now, there wouldn’t be any consequences. If Eddie rejects him—which, judging by how this morning went, is probably what will happen—he can just wake up tomorrow with it having never happened. But also… yesterday. Eddie _yesterday_ was nothing like Eddie this morning. Yesterday he was the Eddie that Richie remembered: annoying, sure, but also someone that just loved his friends. Loved _Richie._ And then this is the crux of it all, that same voice with the same whisper going _maybe_ on repeat like it did all those years ago, when it watched the way Eddie watched him. _Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe._

Tomorrow. If it’s tomorrow or if it’s today, he’ll tell him then. Just to see. Just to _try._ To quiet that voice, give it the closure it didn’t know it would never get the chance to seek.

Today, he settles on telling him to use a different bathroom to wash off after whatever happens with the leper and his token. As Eddie gives him an uneasy, “okay, whatever,” Richie makes a note to ask him about what happened, later.

Bowers comes when he’s supposed to, and instead of stabbing Eddie, Ben throws him down the stairs and he lands with his own knife sticking out of his chest. 

When they’re all together again, they try to ask him about the loops. 

And he could tell them, realistically. His mind is clearer, now; he could probably string the right words together to give them the gist of it. And he knows, deep down, that if he says it right, they’ll believe him. No matter what happened to them in their lives, there’s no way any of them could have changed enough that they would really and fully turn their backs on him in this.

But still. He’s tired.

There are some seriously doubtful looks thrown around after his weak attempt at an excuse _(sorry guys, just had a really vivid dream we already did this day twice and for a minute there I thought it was real—not a morning person, clearly)_ but no one outright questions him further. 

And he almost thinks he’s gotten away with it, but then Mike goes and sacrifices himself. 

It’s in the cistern, and at first Richie doesn’t even register or worry about it because it happens the same way it almost did the first two times. For whatever reason, this time, Bill doesn’t get to him in time and Mike dies.

The minute they get home, Richie downs a couple glasses of whiskey, a handful of sleeping pills, and waits for today to come again.

**This is not how it's supposed to go.**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185222#workskin)**


	9. are they helium balloons?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

_Fuck it._ Richie is done with this shit. He was done with this shit yesterday, when they bullied It’s pathetic pancake-looking ass into the ground. He’s already done this twice—three times, actually, if you count when they were kids, which Richie does, for a matter of fact—and he should be under no obligation to do it again.

And yeah, okay, he made a promise. He swore that if It ever came back he’d come back to and beat it for good. And oh, look, he’s already fulfilled that promise. Fucking _twice._ So he’s good.

“Twice!” he says it out loud for good measure, throwing a hand up and slamming it back down on the steering wheel to punctuate his point. “Two fucking times! And not one more, you little bitch! I’m not playing this sick fucking game!” He’s aware that he probably both looks and sounds like a crazy person, but he doesn’t care. He’s on the 95, and soon enough he’ll be at the airport where he can get the first flight back to LA and then he’ll be surrounded by other crazy people and maybe then he’ll feel at home instead of feeling like he’s about to die.

Derry only ever felt like home when he was with his friends. Even then he felt sort of crazy the entire time, but at least with them he felt like he wasn’t the only one. Like they were all the same brand of crazy, and that made them all kind of sane, to each other. 

He frowns at the image that comes into his mind then, a flash of flailing limbs tumbling out of a hammock and a thin scream. The memory didn’t even exist in Richie’s mind until this moment, but now that it’s there he remembers it perfectly, as if he’s in it, bony knees dropping to the clubhouse floor as Stan frantically clambers backwards, eyes frozen on the _Madonna_ poster hanging from the wall. None of them could see what he saw, but they all knew Stan saw the woman from the painting that day in the sewers. They didn’t need to see it to know to grab his hand and tell him he was safe.

But that was nearly three decades ago, and now Stan is dead and it’s Richie’s turn to cower in the corner of the room. Except this time, his friends are just looking at him like he’s _crazy_ crazy, a kind of crazy they no longer understand and are afraid to even _try_ to understand. The kind of crazy he felt as a kid, bubbling up deep inside him every time he looked at Eddie, the one he vowed never to speak of and knew would ruin him in the end. This time, his friends are looking at him like he’d always feared they would look at him.

He knows that he’s making a lot of leaps here, and that he would probably react that same way if one of them flipped out and said they were stuck in a time loop. And none of it means that they’d react that way if he told them about the other thing—but rejection is rejection and this is where his brain has decided to place it, so he’s just going to have to deal with the awful feeling crawling over every inch of his skin. 

The _Now Leaving Derry!_ sign whips by him on the side of the road, and a harsh breath rushes out of Richie’s lungs. Last night—two nights ago, whatever—Bev said she didn’t see all of them making it. Stan was the first. Maybe Richie was supposed to be the second? Maybe he’s actually doing them a favour by leaving, upping their chances by taking himself off the board.

And if not, it probably doesn’t even matter, anyway. He’ll just wake up and try again tomorrow if this isn’t it. He almost smiles at that, in a sort of deranged, reassuring way. Nothing that he does right now actually _has_ consequences. Probably. Yeah, it’s fine. He’ll take today to lose his shit, maybe eat some of those pretzels from the airport lounge, then try again tomorrow. He’ll find a way to explain it to the losers so that they won’t think he’s still drunk from the Jade, and then he’ll break the loop. Someone will have answers. 

And if not, he can figure it out tomorrow. Today. Today, but tomorrow. Whatever.

There’s a flood of relief, and he taps his fingers on the steering wheel once more. Tomorrow today, he will do something about this. This today, he will drive his expensive rental car to the airport and see how far he can get before he wakes up in the townhouse tomorrow today morning. 

Spoiler alert, it’s not fucking far.

He’s just accepted that he is in fact, in this thing and not having some messed up childhood trauma induced psychotic break, when he notices a swath of red in the distance, softly pulsing up and down like a wave. 

“What the fuck…” He is still very much in the talking out loud to himself phase of this day when he squints out the windshield, absently cursing himself for not getting his prescription updated like he was supposed to last month. The smudge of red quickly grows bigger—or, he realizes, closer—until he can make out the texture of it, a million little red circles floating along the highway, coming towards him at a speed not unlike that of a slightly perturbed horde of jellyfish: not fast, but also not something you can dismiss, because they’re still jellyfish.

Except in this metaphor the jellyfish are red fucking balloons.

Richie barely has the time to think, _hey, why not, right?_ before his car hits them like a wall, everything around him glowing a menacing dark red as they envelop the outside of his car, obscuring every window. He realizes that he’s still driving at full speed when they start bouncing off the car and into each other, like some horrible game of basketball where all the players are bees. The sound is unlike anything he’s heard before, and it sets his teeth on edge. There doesn’t seem to be an end to the balloons, all sense of time and space fading away as it continues.

He has half a mind to get out his phone and call someone, _(Eddie,_ his mind tells him, as it often does) hand halfway to his pocket when suddenly he’s thrown sideways, head cracking against the window as he feels his stomach lurch as if he’s suspended mid-air. _Oh, cool,_ he thinks. There’s another swerve as the car clips off of something solid, and then the world spins for three seconds before there’s one final crash and it all goes dark.

**Well, clearly that didn't work.**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185222#workskin)**


	10. A Primer for the Small Weird Loves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

“I’ll talk to Eddie, you guys go try and find out where Bill went.” 

Mike and Bev nod, jumping into action right away. Richie stays on the stairs for another second or two just to breathe. Eddie loves him. Eddie loves him—every Eddie loves him, not just yesterday’s. Eddie has loved him since they were kids, and he loves him now, still. Eddie loves him. He repeats it to himself, a litany with no response.

Eddie loves him.

“What, Bev’s sending in the B team now?” He’s still standing in the kitchen where Ben had cornered him earlier, eyes darting and leg shaking like he’s about to make a run for it. Richie ignores the comment, taking a breath and blinking quietly at Eddie until he’s clearly uncomfortable. He goes to make another quip and Richie cuts him off, quietly.

“After It, the first time. You wished you could break your other arm,” he says, holding his poker face against the thrill of satisfaction that comes from the way Eddie’s face drops immediately. “Do you remember why?”

Eddie flounders. “How do you know that?” he asks, voice breathy and weak.

“You told me, last night.”

“After the Jade? When we were drunk?” It’s clear that he’s reaching, but Richie respects the commitment. When Richie doesn’t respond—just raises an eyebrow, waiting—he shakes his head, breathing gone shallow. “No, that’s not—there’s no way you could have known that.” 

“Unless?”

“Unless, fuck you! I’ve never told  _ anyone—” _

“Except me, last night.” Eddie stops, looking over at Richie with this awful, terrified expression on his face. Richie continues, calmly and quietly: “after we beat It.”

Eddie seems to consider this for a while, chewing on his lip absently as his eyes glaze over, faraway. Richie hopes he isn’t crossing a line. He wishes he could feel the safety of knowing he has another try tomorrow, but he doesn’t—he has no fucking idea what sets this thing off. Maybe the universe wanted him to irreparably ruin his friendship with Eddie, and after he pisses him off enough, he’ll break the loop. Maybe he’s going to be stuck here forever, by chance accompanied with the grumpiest iteration of Eddie to ever exist, and he’s just going to have to keep convincing him that he’s not kidding, that he loves him, that he always has. 

Maybe this is another one of It’s tricks, trapping him perpetually with the one thing he’s always been too scared to confront. That would make sense, right? His biggest fear? His dirty little secret? 

But after the first go at it, the fear has kind of faded—not entirely, there’s still that pesky little  _ what if  _ at the back of his mind, the voice of his thirteen year-old self moping around that Eddie could never love him. He knows that’s not true anymore. He knows Eddie loves him. Eddie  _ told  _ him, he was there. But how much longer is that going to hold? How many more todays can Richie take before they all start to blend together, the individual events failing to hold any meaning? What’s the endgame here, and does that come before or after Eddie’s love stops feeling real? 

(A small spoiler: it never stops. But oh, there is an endgame.)

“What else did I tell you?” Eddie asks, finally. Richie blinks and takes him in: shoulders hunched forward, defensive, arms wrapped around his stomach like he’s clutching a wound, trying to hold himself inside himself, a desperate attempt to keep everything from spilling out.

It’s funny. It’s all very funny. 

“Technically, I told you,” Richie says, not moving. 

Eddie shifts his weight to one foot, and then the other. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Rich, don’t fuck around with me.” He looks close to tears, hands balling into fists.

“I’m not.”

Eddie just stares at him, halfway between angry and something else, something Richie can’t place. He might have been able to name it when they were kids, but the word isn’t there anymore. The air feels sharp, like if either of them breathes it’ll slice them to bits.

“What, do you want me to say it?” Eddie asks then, the words bursting out oddly, like they were the first ones to make it to his mouth. Richie feels oddly calm, not unaffected but somehow removed, like this isn’t his moment to experience, just Eddie’s. He thinks about the question.

“Yeah, I think so,” he answers honestly, level tone earning an annoyed squint. “I never told you before ‘cause I was always waiting for you to say it first, so. Maybe that’s how it needs to go.”

Eddie runs a hand down his face, and when he pulls it away he looks like he might actually cry. Richie’s stomach lurches immediately and he goes to tell Eddie to forget it, and that he doesn’t have to do this, that it was all a joke, haha, but then Eddie stands up straight and uncrosses his arms. 

“I thought that if I broke my other arm, you might touch me again.” His jaw is set hard and it looks like he’s expending a great amount of effort to get the words out, something physically blocking them on top of whatever emotional wall he might have built around them. 

Richie nods. Last night, he hadn’t entirely understood. But then Eddie had taken Richie’s hand and pressed his fingers into the soft skin of where his arm had snapped before, in Neibolt, and he remembered grabbing it and cracking it back into place, Eddie’s screams paling in comparison to the deafening crunch of bone in his grip. 

(He’d always wished he could forget that sound. Funny, how wishes work.)

It seems like that might be all Eddie has to say, but then he takes a breath and starts off again. “I thought… Jesus fucking christ, Richie, do you know how embarrassing this is for me? Do you know how fucking hard it was to grow up in _this_ town with _my_ mom and be gay? And in love with my best fucking _friend?_ Do you know how goddamned scary that was? I buried it so deep that I fucking forgot my own sexual orientation when I left town. I—” he falters for a second, anger draining out of him. “I mean, I—I knew, I kind of always knew, but I was able to ignore it and I was able to ignore the hole in my chest where—where _you_ were, for, for thirty fucking years! I wasn’t happy but I was _fine,_ Richie. I was fine. And then I come back here and find out I’m still in love with you, like some kind of… I don’t even know. Can you not see how mortifying it is for me to even be having this conversation right now?” 

Eddie finishes with his chest heaving, tears shining in his eyes. He doesn’t look at all like yesterday’s Eddie—he looks mad, and  _ hurt. _ Richie suddenly understands what’s going on here. “Wait,  _ Eds—” _

He winces and retreats back into the counter. “Don’t call me that,” he whispers. 

And maybe he should have led with this, but: “Eddie, I’m in love with you,” he explains, shaking his head halfway between helpless and confused.

Eddie is still on the defense, eyes fluttering shut when he hears Richie speak. “I said don’t fuck around with me,” he says weakly. 

He doesn’t believe it. He really doesn’t. He’s not sure why this Eddie, today, is so much more afraid of the idea that he could be loved by Richie. Maybe it’s just the idea that he could be loved. That he could be loved in a way that doesn’t hurt, in a way that he would enjoy. He has to know that his friends love him, have always loved him, but Richie supposes that this is different. Who’s told him they loved him—his wife? His mom? He’s never met his wife and he doesn’t remember everything about his mom, but Richie knows that isn’t love. 

“I’m not fucking around with you,” he starts, “I’m in love with you. I always have been, and at this rate I probably always will be.” He leans an arm against the counter beside him, taking a breath as he realizes he means it, that it’s true.. Eddie doesn’t move. “Remember how I offered to carry your books at school when you still had your cast? And I’d pile them all on top of mine and you’d make fun of me for refusing to hold them like a normal person? It’s because I wanted to make sure that your good arm was free so that if you wanted to hold my hand, you could.” Eddie lets out a strangled sort of gasp, as if the air had been ripped from his lungs. Richie sighs. “I would have held your hand if you asked, Eddie.”

“Why did—” Eddie clears his throat and tries again. “Why didn’t  _ you  _ ask?”

“Same reason as you. I was scared.”

Eddie cracks a smile, his first one of the day. “Well, that was pretty stupid of us,” he says, slowly. It sounds like an apology. 

Richie wants to tell him he doesn’t need to apologize, but instead he says, “Yeah, yeah it was.” They just look at each other for a moment or two, opposite sides of the kitchen filled with the same shaky laughter like,  _ what comes next? _

“Hey, Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“You think I could hold your hand?”

Eddie teeters for a second, blinking oddly. His eyebrows knit together and he nods and breathes a quiet, “Yeah,” as Richie slowly crosses the room and takes Eddie’s hand in his.

“Can I—”

“Please.”

And then they’re kissing, hungry and sad and desperate and nothing like the first time. Eddie’s hand snakes out of Richie’s, moving up his arm to grab behind Richie’s neck, pulling him in closer. There’s a low moan in response to that that Richie only registers as his after he feels Eddie’s lips smirking against his, smug. He’s about to retaliate, head spinning, when there’s suddenly a cough and a voice.

“Hey, have you guys—oh,  _ fuck,  _ sorry!” If it was anyone other than Ben, Richie might be out for blood right now. But it is Ben, so he just squeezes his eyes shut as Eddie takes a grand leap backwards and lets out a sigh.

“It’s fine,” he says, trying to decide between watching Eddie titter uncomfortably or watching Ben turn beet red, staring at the floor. 

Ben clears his throat and mumbles another  _ sorry  _ for good measure, then turns to leave.

“You wanted something?” 

He turns back again, shaking his head profusely. “Nah, it’s good, I’ll just—”

“Dude, come on.”

Eddie sighs, short and annoyed. “You came in here for  _ some  _ reason,” he says, silent  _ some reason other than to ruin the mood  _ somehow telepathically beamed into Richie’s mind. He holds back a smirk. 

Ben smiles apologetically, leaning up against the door frame. “I was just gonna, uh. Have you guys seen Bev? We were gonna go look for Bill with Mike and then she disappeared. Sorry.”

Before either of them can answer, Bev herself calls out from down the hall. “I’m here,” she says, appearing behind Ben, arms held crossed, braced tight against her torso. “And actually, I was hoping I could talk to Richie for a sec.” She nods her chin at him slightly, a hint of something troubled on her face. She doesn’t seem to notice Ben doing a double take at that, lips floundering.

“Oh, uh, yeah, okay,” he fumbles, “that’s—that’s fine, yeah. Eddie, do you wanna…” he starts the question but doesn’t finish it, trailing off at the unimpressed look on Eddie’s face: eyes half-lidded with his eyebrows low, chin tilted down as if to ask,  _ what do you think? _

“Right,” Ben continues awkwardly, “I’ll just… alright, cool. I’ll call you guys if we find anything.” And with that he’s turning on a heel and out of sight. 

For a second, the only sound in the room is that of Ben’s shoes fading down the hall, and then a beat later Richie and Bev speak at the exact same time.

“I think we need to talk.”

The three of them end up sitting on the front porch, Bev and Richie chainsmoking their way through a conversation about the time loop problem while Eddie stays a safe ten feet away, occasionally jumping in about the dangers of smoking or the plot of different movies with time loops.

The conversation enlightens Richie to several things:

One, Bev has seen this, in the deadlights. She didn’t have context for it when she was a kid, but hearing about Bowers going after Mike tipped her off to realize that she’s seen this.

Two, Bev has seen this a lot of times. She seems hesitant to reveal too much, letting Richie take the lead on laying out the things that have happened so far. It’s… he’s not suspicious. He would never use the word suspicious when it came to Bev, or any of his friends, for that matter. But it’s something he notices—the way she’ll take a breath to say something then stop suddenly, as if she’s checking herself. He doesn’t blame her. Or, he tries not to blame her. Yeah, he’s fucked and he needs absolutely all the intel he can get, but she’s also probably traumatized. He didn’t miss the way she looked on the phone with Stan’s wife yesterday, and he’s not missing the bags under her eyes as if she hasn’t slept now.

Three, Eddie’s seen a  _ lot  _ of movies about time loops. 

Richie can tell that the conversation has hit a wall and he’s not going to get much further when Bev’s phone starts to ring, Ben’s name lit up on the screen.

“Hey Ben, any news on Bill?” There’s a vacant, waiting look on her face for a split second and then her eyes go wide, a hand quickly coming up to cover her mouth as it drops open. “He  _ what?  _ For what? How?” She puts out her cigarette and stands, pacing immediately. Richie and Eddie share a look. “Oh my god, okay. Do you want us to—okay, okay. Well, jesus, Ben. Fuck… Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Okay, bye.”

She ends the call and slips her phone in her pocket, staring at the ground. “Uh.”

“What happened?”

She squints, grimacing slightly as she looks up to meet Eddie’s eyes. “Bill got arrested?”

Richie stands. Eddie blinks. “He  _ what?” _

“Ben said they found him at his old house screaming at that… kid from the restaurant last night? And the parents called the cops?” She shrugs, just as confused as them. 

It takes a second for Richie to process it, but then it hits. “Oh, jesus fucking christ,” he groans, turning aimlessly. 

“What?” Eddie asks, taking a step towards him in concern, smoking distance be damned. 

Richie all but leans into the barely-there touch of Eddie’s fingers on his wrist, sighing. “This morning, I told him that the kid died yesterday. He probably…”

“Georgie,” Bev finishes, a sad, knowing look on her face.

Richie sighs again. “Yeah. Fuck.”

“It’s not your fault,” Eddie says quietly, just for Richie, as Bev runs a hand through her hair and sits back down on the steps, lighting up another cigarette. Richie feels compelled to kiss him on the head, then does, because he can, and drags the both of them to the steps with Bev, looking to her for permission before leaning his head on her shoulder. 

She tilts her head down so that it rests on his and brings her cigarette up to his lips, offering a drag. Eddie coughs obnoxiously. Richie rubs an absent thumb on the inside of his thigh as he exhales the smoke, the three of them sitting there in silence, exhausted and quietly aghast. 

The morning is starting to bleed into afternoon when they decide to head inside and see what they can scrape together for lunch. Richie and Bev haven’t moved from where they parked themselves an hour ago, post phone call. Eddie, meanwhile, has gotten up to stretch and is currently crouched at the edge of the front walkway, staring dreamily at the installment of landscaping river rocks, completely in his own world as Richie and Bev start to stand and dust themselves off.

“God, remember when we got—oh, what was that Mexican place that went up in seventh grade? I’d kill to have a burrito right now,” Bev says, stubbing out her cigarette and and grabbing the door. She turns back to face Richie with a bright smile, her first one all morning. “You and me used to skip 3rd period English all the time in ninth grade to go—Richie,  _ what?”  _ Her smile fades as she tilts her head at Richie, currently wide-eyed with his tongue in his throat.

Oh, why, you ask? 

Bowers, standing in the open doorway behind an oblivious Bev, hamfisted and sporting a rusty old knife. “It’s your time.”

She whips around at the same time as Eddie’s head whips up, and she lets out a cut-off scream as she stumbles backwards into Richie’s chest. The next couple of seconds happen both in fast-forward and in slow motion, neither cancelling the other out but rather augmenting the effect, a fast-slow in which Bowers clicks out the blade of his knife and lunges for Bev with a greasy, deranged smile, and in which a smooth, hefty rock sails through the air and connects with his eyebrow, resting perfectly still on his skin for just a moment before it ripples and he topples back into the townhouse. There’s a second of delay and then a scream registers not from Bowers but from behind Richie, enraged and guttural and coming from _Eddie._

_ Oh,  _ Richie thinks.  _ Rock war. _

Bowers groans lowly from his where he lies on his back in the hall, but otherwise doesn’t move. Richie and Bev are frozen, awkwardly clutching to each other still back to front with Bev’s arms twisting behind her and Richie wrapping one of his across her front, his hand in a near death grip on her shoulder—both of them heaving, both of them slowly turning to see a peripheral Eddie, hunched over like some sort of ape with a cartoonishly angry look on his face. 

“Fucking Bowers,” he mutters, breaking the seal on whatever fight or flight deadlock Bev and Richie were stuck in as a short burst of hysterical laughter peels out of Richie, high and insane. Bev untangles herself from him and turns around carefully, stepping over Bowers feet from where they stick out of the door and facing Richie and Eddie.

“What do we do?” she whispers urgently, eyes wide. Right as she says it, Bowers moans again and she whips around, lightning quick, to kick his leg with a pointy booted foot, no longer caught off guard and no longer afraid.

_ That’s my Bev.  _ The thought pops up without Richie asking it to, but he agrees regardless. He gives her a smirk when she turns back around and she shakes her head. “We need to get inside.”

If you had told Richie when he woke up this morning that, 1) Bill Denbrough was going to get arrested, and 2) he was going to be spending his afternoon trying to figure out what to do with the unconscious body of Henry Bowers, he’d tell you that he already lived the weirdest day of his life yester-today and he was retiring from both the universe and Derry’s fuckshit. Thanks but no thanks!

It’s becoming clear that Richie’s pretty far from any kind of retirement. He’s also pretty fucking far from any sort of continuation of what he and Eddie got started this morning, the world’s greatest cockblock currently tied up in the back of his rental car. They decided not to straight up kill him—even though it would be well within the realm of things both they and Bowers deserved—and instead to take him down to the barrens, restrained, then call in an anonymous tip.

(“You know I killed him yesterday, right?” Richie said jokingly, tone falling off at the grave look on Bev’s face. 

She just pressed her lips together tightly, shaking her head. “I don’t want to be like him,” she said, and suddenly Richie realized she wasn’t talking about Bowers. 

“It wouldn’t make you like him—either of them. It wouldn’t,” he says, low and serious. She looks at him with wide eyes and cradles her arm to her chest, instinctively. “We’ll get you out of there, after all this is over. I promise.”

She didn’t give him much in response to that other than a watery smile, but Richie knew she had heard him, loud and clear.)

And with that he and Eddie were off, leaving Bev behind to take a bath and, quote, “give them some time alone”.  _ Jesus.  _

They dump Bowers—still unconscious, thanks to some half-accidental not too careful handling on the way into the backseat—at the barrens unceremoniously, and get back in the car after a generous helping of hand sanitizer, courtesy of Eddie. They waste no time in getting back to the main roads, but Richie’s not too concerned with hurrying once they’re out of both the metaphorical and literal woods. Eddie doesn’t seem to be in that much of a rush, either. 

“Remember when you got your license?” he asks, smiling on the edge of mischievous as Richie makes the turn off the main street down towards the Mexican place Bev was talking about, earlier. 

Richie squints, running through what he remembers of junior year. “Remind me?”

“The first time you took me out for a drive, just the two of us, we almost crashed.” He says it with a smile, out of place for the words that precede it. 

It rings a vague, distant bell in Richie’s mind. “We  _ what?” _

Eddie rolls his eyes and messes with the radio for a second before explaining. “We were driving… pretty close to here, actually,” he says, nodding out the window at the river running parallel to the street, “and I like, told some lame joke that—really, it wasn’t even funny, but jesus, Rich, you fucking lost it. You were laughing so hard you had to pull over.”

Oh, now it’s there: a cloudy spring morning in the front seat of his dad’s station wagon, Eddie’s giggling like the fucking sun compressed into a sound bite. 

“Not my fault you were so funny,” he defends, throwing one hand off the wheel in a shrug, “and cute. You can’t be funny  _ and  _ cute and expect me to be able to not be a distracted driver.”

Eddie snorts an acknowledgment, but doesn’t argue the point further, just smiles in that way he does when he’s got something good to hit back with but wants to save it, nose all scrunched up. In that moment he’s like a living ghost of his fifteen year old self, a break in the clouds sending a ray of sunshine down with the express purpose of lighting up the freckles above his brow. 

The moment hangs on for another second longer before Richie realizes that it’s very likely that Eddie won’t remember this come tomorrow. Or today, whatever. It’s a sad thought invading a happy moment, but at the very least it comes with the addendum that Richie can look for this patch of light tomorrow and find it on Eddie’s face at least one more time.

They bring lunch home and eat it with Bev in the dining room, and odd collage of takeout wrappers and cheap napkins spread over one of the grandest, most expensive-looking tables Richie has ever seen. The burritos are just as good as they remembered, and it feels just as much a victory to be sitting in that house eating lunch with his friends that are alive as it did to not get caught skipping class all those years ago—a small victory, in the grand scheme of things, but a triumphant feeling nonetheless. 

Later, Bill comes home. It’s late, and Bill, Mike, and Ben look nothing less than exhausted when they walk through the front door of the townhouse. 

Bill’s the first one to talk, with a smile on his face that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hey, what’d  _ you  _ guys do today?” 

Richie thinks he might be trying to say it jokingly, but the words fall flat. He spares Bill the sympathetic look Bev is giving him right now and says, cheerily, “We got attacked by Bowers!”

Ben does a double-take and says, “You  _ what?”  _ which really seems to be the phrase of the day, at this point. They spend a cool twenty minutes doing a recap of this morning’s mishap, and afterwards Ben and Mike explain how a now sheepish Bill landed himself in Derry jail for the day.

(Richie said the kid died, so Bill went to go warn him and get his parents to take him out of town. And by warn, we mean spend the better part of five minutes desperately stuttering at their door as the kid himself was ushered inside. The parents called the cops and then the bastards themselves hauled Bill off to the station, where Ben and Mike just so happened to see him being brought out of the car. A lot of waiting, a lot of paperwork, and one fat cheque from Ben later, and here they are.)

Bill admits that he was thinking of Georgie, and how he still blames himself. The losers quickly rally to tell him—again, with just as much care and truth as the last time—that he’s wrong. Richie can tell he doesn’t believe them, not really, but it’s a nice moment anyway. It even almost feels complete, the five of them standing around Bill. 

(He thinks that if Stan were here, he wouldn’t be in this thing to begin with. He doesn’t know how, just knows that it would make sense with him around. Everything always made more sense with Stan around.)

“Richie?” Eddie catches him on his way out of the bathroom as everyone’s heading to bed, nervously playing with the sleeves of his pajama shirt—an honest to god pajama shirt, with matching bottoms and everything.

“Is that satin?” he asks in lieu of a response, just because he’s had a good day (a good day!) and feels like being a shit. 

Eddie rolls his head to the side and turns to go. “Forget it.”

“Aw, Eds, I wasn’t making fun of you! I was gonna say it’d look better on my floor, but—”

It’s not his best, and evidently Eddie agrees because he cuts him off with a scoff and turns back around, crossing his arms in the threshold of his room’s door. He just stands there for a second, looking at Richie with the body language of someone that’s annoyed, but the face of a lovesick fool. 

“‘Kay, well?” He tilts his head back into his room—toward his  _ bed?— _ and Richie’s eyes widen before he shrugs.

“I was gonna ask you to at least buy me dinner first, but I guess lunch will suffice.”

Eddie’s jaw drops, scandalized, before he shakes his head and sighs against the door frame. “No, jesus, I mean—” He huffs and puffs for a second, hands coming up to prepare for some wild gesture as he exhales, deflating. “I mean just come stay with me,” he says quietly, barely a touch away from a whine, which, somehow, has Richie’s mind short circuiting with much more severity than when he thought Eddie was asking him to come bone down.

Richie falls asleep with Eddie held in his arms, which is all he ever wanted and was too afraid to do. He hopes that he might get to do it again, and he hopes that he might get to wake up tomorrow.

Too bad for Richie, it’s one or the other. 

**Don't worry, he'll figure it out sooner or later.**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185435#workskin)**


	11. Bill Denbrough Goes To Jail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

“Okay. How about Bev rides with me to look for Bill and Mike tries to talk to Eddie?” 

Maybe it’s selfish, but Richie just can’t handle talking to Eddie one on one right now, not after this morning’s rejection. Not that it was even an outright rejection, but jesus fucking christ, it sure felt like one. Maybe whiplash is a better word, going from last night to this morning. Whatever. Whatever word it is, it fucking sucks, and Richie doesn’t feel like confronting it right now.

He can confront it later. Or, most likely, tomorrow/today. As far as he knows, he has all the todays in the fucking world to confront this. Surely he doesn’t have to do it right now.

He doesn’t look back down the hallway as he and Bev pull their jackets on.

“So, this time loop thing,” Bev says once they’re seated in Richie’s car, radio playing softly in the background. 

“Look I know how it—”

“I believe you, Richie.” She gives him a look that’s almost a little confused, like,  _ of course I do.  _ Richie could cry. “I don’t know if It’s capable of… of bending time and space like this, but if It is, then this is definitely something I can see It pulling.”

Oh, now that’s a thought. “You think this is It?”

She shrugs, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I mean, I don’t know what else this could be. Just another trick, right?”

He hums. “I don’t know, I was kind of thinking it was like, almost a second chance kind of thing? Eddie died the first time, so when I woke up yesterday and it was still today, I took that as a sign that I was supposed to save him.”

“And you did.”

“Yeah, but obviously I’m still stuck, so now I’m not too sure.”

She nods thoughtfully and they come up to a red light, tiny smile forming on her lips as a group of kids cross the street on their bikes. “I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility.”

“I don’t think  _ anything’s  _ out of the realm of possibility, here.”

“Yeah, probably not,” she says, laughing. The light turns green and they keep driving, town hall rolling by behind them. “So maybe Pennywise, maybe some other force trying to give you another shot.”

“Maybe a demon clown trying to kill us, maybe something on our side. Or,” he smiles, “cosmic punishment for that  _ Groundhog Day  _ thing we pulled back in high school.”

Bev lets out a low, scandalized, “oh,” and props an arm up beside the window. “That was funny,” she admits, nose scrunching up as she laughs silently. “And mean. It was  _ so mean. _ You two would always do stuff like that to each other—remember when he, oh, oh my god, that’s right, remember when he would spend, like,  _ hours  _ writing those fake reviews for your characters and stuff? And he’d do it just so he could tell you they were bad, but he’d be like, laughing the whole time he read them to us when he finished, like barely even able to get the words out by the end of it?”

And Richie didn’t remember, but as she says it he starts to, a fourteen year old Eddie giggling as he stands in the clubhouse with a notebook held up in his hands coming to light in Richie’s mind.  _ I’ll make the next one even worse, just for you, Eds. _

“Yeah, at least back then he  _ laughed _ at me while telling me I was a terrible person.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out as mopey as it does, but, well.

“Oh, Richie,” Bev starts, sympathetic tone immediately setting off alarms in Richie’s head. He racks his brain for something to say, some joke to dispel the weird tension he’s created. Bev and the pity train chug along anyway. “You know he didn’t mean it this morning, right?”

He scoffs. He doesn’t want to fish, but. “Sounded like he meant it.”

She reaches out and turns off the radio, swiveling her hips so that she’s facing him. “Richie. He’s just scared. You know how he gets. And you know,” her voice dips low now, almost teasing, “how he feels about you.”

“I really don’t wanna talk about this, Bev,” he decides, gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead, avoiding her gaze. It burns in his peripherals. “We’re supposed to be looking for Bill,” he adds lamely, a beat too late. Bev just sighs and leans back, crossing her arms.

“Unbelievable,” she mutters under her breath, but it holds no bite. He doesn’t know why he’s freaking out about this now, again, after yesterday. Eddie told him he loved him, and the rest of the losers were fine with it. There’s nothing to be afraid of, anymore. But… that was yesterday, and today is today. Yesterday was also today, but it was a  _ different  _ today, one that seemingly no longer exists. It never happened. There’s no way that Richie knows  _ today’s  _ Eddie and  _ today’s  _ losers would be fine with it all.

He does know that that’s bullshit, but the part of his brain that handles rational thinking just isn’t up to par today, so he keeps on stewing in his bad mood as they drive on, no sign of Bill to be found.

They decide to swing by Bill’s old house, and then after another couple minutes of silence, Bev speaks up again.

“Did you—did you go in the deadlights, any of the other times?” 

He looks over to her, just for a second, and sees her staring over at him, searching. It’s the same kind of face she was making earlier in the kitchen, like she was putting it all together. And it’s only for a second, because he’s a responsible driver and also he  _ is  _ supposed to be scanning the streets for any sign of Bill, but it’s that look that tips him off.

Bev knows more than she’s letting on, here.

“Just for a few seconds,” he says, carefully, trying not to look like he’s watching for her reaction. “Why?”

“Did you see anything?”

“No, not really,” he says, shivering at the flash of cold white that comes to mind. Bev studies him for a second and Richie sighs. “Look, Bev, if there’s something you know, I need you to tell me.”

“Sorry, I was just—I thought maybe if It got you in the deadlights, like it got me, you would have seen—holy fuck,  _ Richie,  _ look.” 

Bev has a hand over her mouth, eyes frozen forward. Richie follows her gaze and the car screeches to a stop outside Bill Denbrough’s childhood home.

Here is the scene that we are setting: a beautiful house, muted olive paneling and red brick accent. A skateboard propped up against the front steps, bracketed by a perfectly manicured lawn on one side and a long driveway leading behind the house on the other. A mother and a father standing on the porch, both their faces and their stances set hard and defensive. A child, watching from the open doorway. 

And, waving his arms and yelling in the faces of two cops, Bill Denbrough.

“Oh, Bill,” Bev says, the two of them just watching in shock from their seats in the car as the scene unfolds, transfixed. After a second or two of this, they snap out of it and jump into action.

“You don’t understand!” Richie hears Bill shouting as soon as he gets out of the car, “he’s going to die! He’s going to die, just let me—hey!” He turns his attention now to the parents, disturbed on the porch. “Don’t let him go to the fair! You hear me? Don’t go to the fair, get out of Derry, get—”

“Bill!” Richie shouts. Everyone else falls silent, looking to him. “Uh, hi, officers,” he says awkwardly, Bev trailing behind as he crosses the street. “What, hm, what seems to be the problem here?”

From the porch, the kid calls out, “Richie  _ Tozier? _ That guy’s a freak.” The first officer—clearly the one in charge here, with the push broom mustache to prove it—turns casually back to the kid.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, he yelled at me last night.”

Mustache turns back, bushy eyebrows raised. “Is that so?”

Richie ignores the question. “Hey, so, I just came to take my friend here, he means no trouble—”

“Richie, Richie,” Bill interrupts, so desperately that Richie feels a wave of first  _ and  _ secondhand embarrassment go through him. “Tell them. Tell them what you told me, what you said was gonna happen.”

Both officers turns to Richie now, Mustache and his pudgy, younger looking partner, both with a lovely new look of skepticism and disdain. 

“Our friend hasn’t been feeling well lately,” Bev says then, stepping forward with an apologetic smile. “He, um, read this really scary book and now he thinks he’s—”

“Listen, sweetheart,” Mustache cuts in, smiling like an asshole. “I don’t really care if your  _ friend  _ got spooked—”

At this moment, Bill takes the opportunity to break out of Babyface’s weak hold and bound up the stairs to the porch, pleading to the now recoiling parents with hushed, frantic warnings.

“Jesus christ,” Mustache says, Babyface already wrestling Bill back from the house. He turns back to Richie and Bev, pausing with a confused, then annoyed look as the radio on his hip crackles to life with something about a possible two forty down by the river. “We’re taking him in,” he says decidedly, “if you wanna bail out your child harassing friend, you can meet us at the station downtown.” And with that, he turns and leaves, grabbing a handcuffed Bill by the shoulder and leading him into the cop car.

“Don’t g-go to the fair!” Bill screams over his shoulder, “Leave Derry! L-Leave and never come back!”

“Don’t worry buddy!” Richie calls lightly, unhelpfully, “we’re right behind you!” Mustache gives him one last glare and then drives off. 

Richie watches them round the corner and then whips around to face Bev. “He read a  _ really scary book?” _

“I don’t know! I panicked!”

“Jesus fucking christ, Bev.”

“What, like  _ you  _ could have done better?”

“Well I  _ am  _ a comedian and I  _ have  _ done improv—”

“You don’t write your own material!”

There’s a small, childlike gasp and they both pause their bickering to turn and see the kid still lingering in the doorway, shaking his head with disappointment. 

Bev sighs, grabbing Richie’s shoulder and letting her head fall on her arm with a  _ thunk.  _ “Let’s just—let’s just go.”

The parents glare from the porch. He sighs. “Yeah, good idea.”

The police station is busier than Richie would have expected, hustle and bustle of uniforms across dingy yellow tiling bathed in fluorescent light, faint buzzing undercutting the chatter. Unsurprisingly, they don’t let Richie and Bev see Bill, so the two of them grab a number and wait to be called up for their turn to start the paperwork to bail him out. They both kind of just sit there, Bev staring off into space and fiddling with her necklaces while Richie fully checks out, pulling off his glasses to rub at his eyes.

He thinks about what she asked him earlier, about the deadlights. She said she thought he might have seen something, something like she would’ve seen when It got her. He knows that she’s dreamed about them all dying since she was a kid, so maybe that’s what she was talking about? Did she think Richie might have gotten some freaky future vision, too, and that was somehow related to the time loops?

It  _ would  _ be helpful, actually. Maybe traumatizing, judging on Bev’s reaction to her phone call with Stan’s wife, but worth it if he could look forward and see what the fuck he had to do to break out of this nightmare. But he doesn’t know if that’s how it works, and Bev clearly didn’t feel like giving him the details.

There’s something there, he just doesn’t know what. He’s thinking of a way to ask it so that she’ll tell him when Bev mutters something he doesn’t catch and stands up out of her chair.

As she leaves, Richie looks up to see a small, angry man walking into the waiting area, steps loud and heavy. He stops, looks around for a second, then makes a beeline toward Richie.

_ Oh, good,  _ he thinks,  _ another weird and horrible thing is about to happen.  _ He fumbles with his glasses, getting fingerprints all over the lenses during the journey from lap to face. Just as the person in front of him blinks into focus, he starts talking.

“Rich, guess who was at the fucking townhouse. Fucking Bowers,” Eddie says, not even giving him time to guess, or say hi. “He came in all, ‘it’s your time!’ and me, Mike, and Ben were like, ‘uh, what the fuck?’ and he just, like, tried to fucking kill us with that janky old knife but then Ben fucking clocked him with a, like, pan, a cooking pan, and, yeah.”

Richie blinks up at him. Eddie’s practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, smile wide and exasperated. “It was fucking insane,” he finishes.

Richie takes a second to process all of that. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Bev talking with Mike and Ben, expression on her face telling him she just got the same story. “And now he’s…?”

“Oh, yeah, we tied him up and brought him down to the river and called in an anonymous tip. Not our problem anymore.”

“Oh, how nice.”

“It’s fucking Bowers, man.” And, he has a point. Bowers did try to kill them all multiple times, and even excluding the times that might not exist, it’s still an impressive number of attempts. Richie’s not quite sure how they’re all—well, almost all—still alive.

Eddie puts his hands in the pockets of his sweater then, energy dropping to some sheepish lower level as he suddenly can’t meet Richie’s eyes. “And, uh, I’m sorry. For being such a dick to you this morning,” he says, mostly to the ground, a four foot gap between them that he makes no move to close. “I was in a bad mood, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

Richie tries not to react too much. “So you believe me, then?”

Eddie snorts, looking up. “Well, you fucking oracled Bowers coming to kill us again, so. Yeah, I do.”

Richie smiles. “I don’t think you can use oracle as a verb, Eddie.”

He rolls his eyes and finally sits down in the seat beside Richie, leaning back with abhorrent posture and propping an ankle up on the opposite knee. “I do what I want.” 

It’s a lot hotter than is probably necessary. Richie tries not to think about it. “Oh yeah? Mr. Uptight does what he wants?”

Eddie gives him a more serious look, dense with meaning that Richie can only begin to parse. “I do now.”

“Yeah?” It’s an invitation.

Eddie considers. “Yeah, I—yeah.” He settles on this, and Richie nods quietly in response. He gets a small smile for that, a silent  _ thank you, _ and then Eddie lets out a long sigh. “Weird day, huh?”

“Yeah, can’t say it’s what I expected.” Richie says, eyebrows raised like,  _ understatement of the fucking year.  _ Maybe understatement of the fucking  _ day _ would be more appropriate. 

Eddie’s smiling, and it’s almost nostalgic, like he’s in on some joke they used to have together that Richie hasn’t quite remembered yet. “What did you expect?” 

He’s not sure what comes next, what his part is supposed to be. It’s just out of reach, resting at the very fringes of his mind. One of his voices, maybe. “Well,” he begins, head lolling to the side to find Eddie, now, 1) a lot closer than he’s expecting, close enough to make out the pale freckles he didn’t realize Eddie still had, and 2) with his complete attention directed towards Richie. It takes a very large amount of effort not to lose his train of thought. “the first time, you died.”

Eddie blinks, mouth falling open slightly. Richie does not look at it. “And the—you said this is the third time, right?” He tilts his head and waits for Richie’s nod, then continues. “What about the second time?”

Richie laughs to himself, not really making any noise, and lets his head fall down so that his chin is pressed down to his chest, shoulders shaking. He smiles as Eddie nudges him with his elbow, voice laced with nervous laughter as he says, “C’mon, asshole. What happened the second time? Or, what, are you really just fucking around with us?”

He knows that Eddie doesn’t really believe that, not after his apology, but Richie takes a second to enjoy the weird lilt of his voice as he says it, anyway. He gets a very distinct imprint in his mind then, a younger Eddie laughing his way through telling the losers about how none of his medications were real and how his mom had been lying to him his entire life, how it took almost ten minutes to fully calm him down, sitting in Bill’s garage. He wonders how many more memories are just floating beneath the surface like that, waiting for a specific quirk or phrase to bring them back to his consciousness. 

Eddie looks ready to shove him again when Richie finally meets his eye and answers the question. 

Fuck it. Why not?

“The second time, I told you that I’ve been in love with you since we were kids.” 

Eddie blinks, eyes wide. The rest of the station fades into the background, noise barely even registering in Richie’s mind. Eddie takes a moment to flounder with his mouth falling open and shut and then he stills, speaking very carefully. “And what did I say?”

Richie smiles, drags it out for just a few seconds, enjoying the dread settling in on Eddie’s face. “Well first, you kissed me,” he says, watching the way Eddie speedruns the five stages of grief, landing on acceptance with a modestly dropped jaw and tears welling in his eyes. Richie laughs. “But then we remembered we were covered in shit, so. It definitely wasn’t the hottest first kiss.”

Eddie frowns deeply, in that weird little way he does when he’s being serious about something. He takes a breath, holds it, and then— 

“Think I could try again?”

Richie nods desperately and Eddie leans in, capturing his lips in a kiss that’s just as sweet as the first time, sans sewage.

After a few seconds he pulls away and asks, “How was that?”

Richie tilts his head. “I don’t know, I think you might need to—”

And just like that, they’re making out in a police station like a couple of delinquent teens waiting for their parents to come get them after getting picked up for tagging an underpass. There are lots of feelings, some of them expressed in urgent, hushed whispers between kisses, others bottled up and saved for later. Both of them are well aware that a scene is being made, though neither of them care. 

It’s almost more emotional, for Richie, the second time around. Now that he knows it might not stick, he’s all the more desperate to make sure Eddie hears him, to engrave it deep into his being so that just maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow and remember it. And maybe blazing through thirty years of repressed emotions in the middle of a police station isn’t Richie’s  _ ideal  _ ‘hey kids here’s how your father and I got together’ story, it’s one he’ll be happy to tell if it means it’s the one Eddie remembers.

Once they’ve managed to remain not attached at the lips for more than a minute, Bev ambles over awkwardly. 

“Uh, hey guys,” she says, and they freeze. “Love this, love that you’re finally figuring it out, it’s great, we all love it—” she tilts her head backwards slightly and Richie’s attention falls on Mike and Ben in the background flashing a set of enthusiastic thumbs up. “Just wanted to give you guys an, uh, update, on Bill. It’s going to be a while, so we thought maybe if you guys wanted to go home that’d be fine?”

Beside him, Eddie goes red, and a beat later Richie turns back to Bev with her eyebrows cautiously raised, and clues in on what the implication is here.

“Oh, well,” he says.

**Well, what about it: Should Richie and Eddie dip back to the townhouse and bone?**

**>[Yes! Let them get their freak on!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185063#workskin)**

**>[No! They should stay here and make sure Bill doesn't go to jail.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185102#workskin) **


	12. *holt voice* BOONNEEE????

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

They dip back to the townhouse and bone, then promptly fall asleep almost immediately after because they are forty year old men and no longer have any semblance of stamina. 

**Good for them. But, as for Richie...**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185435#workskin) **


	13. Good Friends, Better Shoulders, and Bad Pizza

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

“You know what, no, we should stay,” Richie decides.

Eddie nods along with him. “Yeah, we all need to be here for Bill,” he adds. 

Bev just raises her eyebrows. “Okay,” she says, “...okay. I’ll, uh, leave you guys to it?” she finishes awkwardly, grimacing to herself as she turns and, as advertised, leaves them to it.

Richie turns to Eddie. “That was the right call, right?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely.”

“We’re good friends.”

“Yeah, we’re good friends.”

It does end up being a while, and Richie and Eddie spend the evening not moving from their chairs, exchanging memories as they crop up, more and more flooding in as they reminisce. After a couple of hours it seems like their brains have synced up, both of them remembering the same things in tandem: the time Richie got his driver’s license and almost crashed the car the first time he took Eddie for a ride because they were laughing too hard; the time Stan nearly started crying at lunch telling the losers about the _extremely rare and beautiful bird_ he saw that weekend; the time Richie got Eddie, Ben, and himself detention after a pizza gone horribly wrong in home ec class.

“I still can’t believe you thought you could just put it straight on the rack,” Eddie laughs, a yawn cutting in halfway through. “Like, I truly do not understand the thought process there.”

Richie scoffs, offended. “Listen, every other pizza I’d made up until that point came from a box that said ‘place directly on rack’. Forgive me for following instructions for once in my life,” he defends. 

“Okay but, like, it wasn’t frozen. Richie, we made the dough ourselves. You—you held it in your hands, you couldn’t have thought it was going to stay, like, flat on the rack.” Eddie is clearly getting a kick out of this, riling himself up as it becomes clearer in both their minds. 

And yes, it was idiotic and overall a complete disaster, but Richie’s not going to give Eddie that, no matter how many kisses he’s gotten today. “You guys could have stopped me,” he points out, shrugging coldly. 

“We were cleaning up! We were—hey, dickwad, we were cleaning up _your mess!”_ he explodes, sending a thrill of satisfaction through Richie as he, much to Eddie’s annoyance, erupts into giggles. _Oh, right._ “Yeah, fuck you. You got sauce everywhere because you were trying to do your fucking Italian—your mafia chef guy, and you flung it everywhere and for god knows what reason it was Ben and me that cleaned it up. God, that’s right.”

If Richie could freeze _this_ moment and live in it forever, he would: the sweet, sugary feeling in this veins as the scene becomes clearer in his mind, a younger Eddie’s half furious, half endeared mumbling as he scrubbed at the walls of the classroom, a little spot of red on the back of his collar. The look on Eddie’s face now, disbelieving and fond in the way that one can only be about things that happened a long time ago—absolutely not even a little bit funny in the moment, but somehow hilarious, later. And, of course—the love that’s written over every inch of him, carried in every curve of his lips and shake of his head, radiating out of every pore and landing on Richie with the dizzying truth of the fact that all this is because of _him._

“That was very kind of you guys,” he says quietly, dumbly, fully swept up in the beauty of this tiny moment, simple yet pure. Eddie looks at him then, eyebrows coming together softly and smile melting into something so adoring it would knock Richie off his feet if he wasn’t already sitting.

“Well, I always had a soft spot for you, so.”

Richie raises an eyebrow. “Think Ben was secretly in love with me, too?” 

Eddie snorts, slapping a hand over his mouth then smiling fondly once more. “No, he’s just that nice.”

“Yeah, he is,” Richie agrees, watching Ben across the station pulling out a chequebook—which, Richie learns in this moment is something that people still have—and talking to one of the officers at the desk. He’s pretty sure that Ben is _rich_ rich, like way richer than Bev or Eddie or himself. Maybe not richer than Bill, with all those sweet sweet movie deals, but then again, Ben isn’t the one currently in jail, so.

“Oh, yeah,” he remembers, “actually, he’s in love with Bev.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, remember that fuckin’—the postcard she had from that secret admirer? It was him.”

Eddie’s eyes widen comically, mouth dropping open in a silent gasp. “No way, that makes _so_ much sense.”

“Right?”

(Meanwhile, Ben is suddenly alight, Bev’s hand resting gently on his arm, the words _thank you_ tumbling sweetly from her lips as he struggles for breath. His heart, quietly bursting at the seams. Tonight, he will stitch it back together, as he always does.)

Richie yawns, bleary as he tries to get the time off the clock on the wall across from him. Time has certainly felt pretty slippery these past few days, but he feels the full brunt of it now, pulling down on his eyelids like a weight. He’s pretty sure they’ve all been awake for something like nineteen or twenty hours, now. 

Eddie tilts his chin down a bit, taking his arm on Richie’s side and pulling it up, offering his shoulder as a pillow. Richie hesitates, just for a second, flashes of _don’t touch the other boys, Richie,_ blazing through his mind before he says a silent _fuck you, clown,_ and nuzzles his head onto Eddie’s chest, letting him drape his arm over his shoulder. 

“Don’t let me fall asleep,” he says, closing his eyes. Eddie snorts an _okay_ and Richie allows the smallest, most minute amount of hope to seep into him that maybe when he wakes up, it’ll be tomorrow.

**"Tomorrow". "Hope". Now _those_ are some concepts.**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185435#workskin) **


	14. [REDACTED]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: dank fucking memes

**Oh, now someone wants to be cute. Listen, I told you not to mess with the chapter buttons. There’s no way you could have gotten here if you were following the instructions. This is the Forbidden Chapter.**

**Well, now that you’re here, I guess you can have some memes. Yeah, I got jokes. Of course I fuckin’ got jokes.**

**These definitely have spoilers for the entire fic, more so as you scroll further. You’ve been warned.**

day 23:

chap 3/4 richie be like:

chap 21 be like:

when u realize you have to let eddie die for richie to move on

this is what its all about. i hope i could do it justice. thank u goodnight

**Oh, you want a little thing telling you where to go next? You want directions? A little choice you get to click on? Baby wants some help? You’re on your own for this one, darling.**


	15. one more time with feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: discussion of sonia kaspbrak's a+ parenting, suicide, substance use/abuse

There are a few things that Richie quickly realizes: the first is that this isn’t something that’s going to be stopped by random, blind attempts at fixing what he thinks the universe wants fixed. The second is that it is infinitely easier to navigate whatever the fuck this is when he has his friends on his side. Despite how poorly the start (and end, jesus fucking christ) of day three went, he finds out on day four (and five, and six, and seven) that if he just cools his shit and tells them what’s going on, his friends will be there for him no matter what.

He also realizes that he might wake up hungover for the rest of his life. He has a lot of qualms with this particular day and the bounds it has placed Richie within by being the one he has to work with, but there is no feature of this 24 hours that is more petty and terrible than the fact that he wakes up feeling like death. And perhaps it’s some sort of sick, universal commentary on how he’s, like, running himself into the ground with every day that doesn’t pass, and when it’s all over and he makes it to tomorrow he’ll get steamrolled with the consequences of each one of today’s iterations. 

In other words, it fucking sucks. 

It’s only on day eight that he is able to accept that he is really, truly, in this thing. It follows shortly after that that his actions for each day don’t have any consequences that carry any further than that same night.

On day eight, he tells Eddie that he loves him for the very first time.

He doesn’t want to say it. He wasn’t _planning_ on saying it, but it comes out anyway. They’re at a red light, boxes of pizza sitting on Eddie’s lap. He’s looking out the window and humming softly to the radio. Richie’s tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and remembering the first time he got behind the wheel with Eddie in the passenger seat, junior year. They were both _so_ excited, Richie nearly crashing the car after Eddie made him laugh too hard. Both of them were hysterical, laughing or crying or both as Richie pulled over to the side of the road for them to ride it out.

“Did you know that I was in love with you, when we were kids?” He says it softly, almost soft enough that for a second he thinks Eddie doesn’t hear him, head still turned away, transfixed by the kids in marching band uniforms passing by on the sidewalk.

Richie’s halfway to reaching out and checking his pulse when Eddie suddenly turns to face him, eyes watery. “What?” he says, and if Richie hadn’t spent his entire childhood around him, he might think this is said in an angry way. But Richie knew him—knows him—and he knows that it’s just a mask.

The light turns green. “It’s green,” Eddie says, weakly. A chorus of horns starts off behind him, just to drive the point home.

“Oh,” Richie says. For a second, he thinks that this is where the conversation is going to end, but then Eddie speaks again, low and careful.

“Is this a joke?”

Richie pulls off onto a side street, then over to the side of the road and puts it into park. “What?”

“I said, ‘is this a joke?’” Eddie’s jaw is set tight, lips barely moving as he speaks. He’s not giving Richie _anything—_ no hint at a smile, no eyebrow quirking up, nothing.

“Is this a—Eds, no, I’m—fuck, what, you think this is a _joke?”_ Eddie doesn’t say anything but his eyes are suspiciously watery. Richie swallows and takes a deep breath. Time to bring out the big guns. “I… Jesus christ, okay. Remember when we were nine and we wanted to have our first sleepover? And your mom made my mom let her come over and _inspect our house_ for anything that could be potentially dangerous?”

Eddie’s eyebrows drop down low, confused, but then he smiles. “Oh. Yeah,” he says, barely laughing, “like, to see if your furniture was too sharp or you had too much junk food or whatever?”

Richie widens his eyes. “Yeah, that. So. Here’s the thing. My mom thought that was fucking batshit crazy, so she told me no way and also said I should maybe just invite Stan over instead. And I—Eddie, I cried for a day straight. Literally, I did not stop crying for an entire day. My parents almost took me to the hospital.”

“Fucking christ, Richie.” 

“Yeah, I know. And, like, they eventually caved because they just didn’t know how to get me to stop crying otherwise. And as _soon_ as they said you could sleep over if it was okay with you mom, I stopped. And they—I don’t remember this exactly, but I think they, like, asked me what the fuck was wrong with me, afterwards, and I’m pretty sure I just told them I reallly wanted you to think I was cool, because you were just really cool and I wanted you to be my friend _so bad._ I think I tried to get them to adopt you, at one point, to like, appeal to them thinking your mom was weird or whatever.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow at that, but remains silent, attentive. Richie continues.

“So, um—I forgot where this was… Oh, right, okay. I just remember feeling, like, this _fear,_ at the thought of my parents ruining it and you thinking I wasn’t cool and like, not being my friend anymore. It made me—well, obviously, it made me fucking insane. _You_ made me fucking insane, even after the sleepover and after we were best friends and I wasn’t scared of losing you anymore. It was… I was in love with you, Eddie. Plain and simple. I got one look at your annoying little face and heard your annoying little voice say my name for the first time, and that was it. I don’t think there was anything I could have done to stop it. And I—” he stops, breaking away from Eddie’s intense gaze. “I tried to stop it, Eddie,” he admits, voice halfway to broken and looking up again, guilty. “After It, I kind of started to realize… that my feelings for you were, uh, _different,_ than my feelings for Bill or Stan or the others, and I… I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I was just young, and scared, and I didn’t want to lose you—”

“But you did anyway,” Eddie cuts in, and with that he’s crying, and Richie is crying, and they are both sitting in the car and crying. 

“Yeah, I did.” Richie reaches across the console, slowly, and takes Eddie’s hand and puts it gently in his. “But I never stopped loving you?” He says it like a question or a suggestion, not like the absolute and irrevocable truth that it is. He inhales thinly, shakily, as Eddie’s mouth falls open, forehead creasing as his eyebrows draw together.

“Richie,” he says, slow and serious, “You were, and are, the most deeply uncool person I’ve ever met.”

“Oh, obviously. Thank you.”

“And I never stopped loving you, either.”

Richie’s really, really glad he stopped the car. Otherwise, he might have accidentally just added _tumbled into a ditch_ to his list of ways this day has ended. “Oh.”

Eddie sniffles a bit, then smiles wide. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” It’s like his brain has just caught up, processing the words all over again. Eddie squeezes his hand.

“Jesus, _yeah,_ don’t go crying yourself into the ICU about it.” He rolls his eyes but the smile is still on his face, huge and blinding. 

“You love me.” It starts off teasing, Richie’s eyebrows raising up knowingly, but somewhere along the way it goes soft, a sob fighting it’s way out of his throat alongside the words. 

“I love you,” Eddie says, his free hand coming up to cup Richie’s cheek, thumb wiping away the fresh tears that fall there. Richie melts into the touch and Eddie leans over to press their foreheads together.

Let’s be objective here: it’s not perfect. Really, it’s not even comfortable. They’re both leaned over the gearshift, seatbelts digging into their necks, and the pizza boxes are about five seconds from falling out of Eddie’s lap—which, speaking of, the heat is radiating through the cardboard and making their hands sweaty. And to top it all off, Richie _swears_ he can still feel the ghost of a stab wound on Eddie’s chest, just the slightest bit concave, as he presses his hand there, heartbeat raging underneath his fingers.

But then Eddie asks if he can kiss Richie, barely a breath of a question, and as their lips come together, Richie is one hundred percent certain that this is, in fact, the most perfect thing that’s ever happened to him.

And at the end of the day it doesn’t do anything to stop the loop, but the next morning Richie tries again, just to make sure.

On day eleven, he watches Bill die for the first time. It decides to take him in the fun house, and they only find out once they realize he’s not at Neibolt like all the other times when they get to the fair and find the police talking to the kid, drenched in blood.

By day fifteen, he’s seen them all die.

On day sixteen, he doesn’t get out of bed. 

“Richie, what the fuck,” Eddie says from his spot at the door, standing there awkwardly just as Bill and Bev did before him. Richie mutters a joke about sending in the B team—not even his joke, Eddie’s joke, in one of the early ones—and rolls over so that he’s facing him.

“Come lie with me,” he says, almost laughing in anticipation of the look that flinches itself onto Eddie’s face.

“I beg your _pardon?”_

See, the thing is that Richie’s starting to get the hang of some aspects of this hellish joke. He knows that Mike and Bev are always the ones that believe him first. He knows that Ben will quietly follow along with whatever Bev says, and likewise with Bill for Mike. Sometimes Bill goes down hard, he’s a bit of a wildcard—it’s nice to know that some things never change. Eddie is always the hardest to crack—you see, there’s someone, somewhere, that thought this wasn’t hard enough on its own, and decided to trap Richie on the day where it’s not his best friend but a literal storm cloud waking up in Eddie’s body every morning without fail. One that had a very heated fight with his wife the night before after an onslaught of unsolicited memories about the atrocities committed against him by his very own mother.

Richie knows this, Eddie’s told him as much. This morning is a very bad morning for one Eddie Kaspbrak: a fact that Richie gets the joy of testing (and proving!) over, and over, and over again.

All this aside: much like in their adolescent days, Eddie’s the one that gives Richie the hardest time about it all. But also like their adolescent days, he’s pretty transparent in his stubbornness.

Eddie’s always been easy for Richie to read. And if he hadn’t been sporting a cool pair self-loathing goggles his entire childhood, Richie just might have figured out the kid was in love with him, too, and maybe then he wouldn’t be where he is now. But he is here, now, and only now, for the next foreseeable forever, so he resolves to leave the dwelling for when he can do it with Eddie properly confessed to and in his arms. So far, he doesn’t have a bad track record.

He knows that Eddie responds best to Richie being direct about it all, and usually won’t believe him on the whole time loop situation unless he offers up some saucy tidbit about Eddie’s life that the stubborn son of a bitch previously believed to be unmistakably private. He knows that he gets flustered if Richie acts like he knows too much about his feelings, dancing around the confession like a drawn-out bit, and he really likes it when Richie does it all soft and quiet. 

He’s not quite done seeing what happens. He might not ever be. Eddie might be his one reprieve in all of this, despite the sarcasm and the initial sting of his disbelief. That part never stops hurting, but he does start expecting it. Still—there hasn’t been one day where Eddie hasn’t come around, doubling down to believe Richie just as fiercely as he dismissed him, always an apology here or there. He gets used to the cold bed in the morning, the seizing in his chest. He throws himself into the puzzle, each day a new opportunity to unearth another piece of Eddie Kaspbrak: his major in college, (not English, like they’d talked about in high school; business, which he hated but stuck with after switching into it on a whim halfway through his first semester) his favourite drink, (gin and tonic) what he really wished he’d done with his life (something with cars, maybe hands on). Richie takes note of every part, filing them away for those first few seconds of each blue morning that come to suffocate him from the inside out without fail.

“It’s _Groundhog Day,_ and I’m Phil Connors,” he says sleepily, reaching back for his glasses (not cracked, never cracked) so that he can see the confusion cropping up on Eddie’s face.

He catches on quickly this time. “Yeah, Bill said you—”

“Stuck in a time loop? That’s me, yeah.” He lets out a giggle, thinking about Bill making his way down the stairs, dumbfounded as he announced to the losers that Richie was ‘nothing but a mouse in the universe’s psych lab’. He wonders, briefly, if there’s a cosmic ethics board. 

“Richie.”

“You never believe me,” he laments, throwing an arm over his forehead for good measure. Maybe it was sleep deprivation that was making him a nutjob about this, all the times before. Just fifteen more minutes of lying down and the acceptance that there probably isn’t anything he can do to make it to tomorrow is giving Richie a serious case of _who gives a shit._ Maybe he really is Phil Connors. 

Eddie crosses his arms, as he often does. “Oh, is that so?”

“Yeah, _but!”_ He removes the arm from his head and thrusts his pointer finger up triumphantly. “Here’s the thing, Eds. You don’t love your wife. You don’t even _like_ her. You once wrote my name in a library book and then you threw your library card into the river over the bridge on main street because you thought the librarian would know you were in love with me. You’re still in love with me, and I’m in love with you, so would you please just uncross your arms and use them to remove your head from your ass and fucking _come lie with me?_ Would you do that?”

Eddie sort of just stands there for a minute or two with his jaw hanging open, which is understandable. Richie is learning to be patient, so he waits quietly. 

Many, many eternities later, he pointedly uncrosses his arms and places his hands on his hips. “You’re in love with me?” It’s half accusing, half disbelieving.

Richie matches his tone. “Of course I am, dipshit.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says.

(He climbs into bed, anyway.)

On day seventeen, he convinces everyone to stay inside and wait until tomorrow before they go fight It. 

“Our tomorrow, or yours, Tozier?” Bev teases with a wink. 

She’s not really asking, having already peeled off her jacket and curled up on one of the couches, but Richie answers anyway, softly. “Just tomorrow.”

They end up watching a couple of the old movies that the townhouse happens to have lying around, just to pass the time. It’s awfully reminiscent of how they used to spend their Friday nights, down to the seating arrangements: Bev curled up on one side of the couch with Mike beside her, and then Ben with his legs neatly crossed beside him. On the floor is Richie and Eddie, shoulders pressed together and hands that, now, are _not_ afraid to touch. The armchair is empty—Stan’s spot—with Bill folded into himself on the floor in front of it, clearly feeling the absence above him. 

(This time, Richie tells Eddie he’s in love with him in the kitchen, first thing.)

The second movie they watch is _Groundhog Day._ Watch might not be the right way to describe it since they spend the first half of the movie going back and forth about that one time Richie got everyone to help him convince Eddie he was stuck in a time loop. It’s the third time they’ve remembered it, and Richie’s starting to feel like this entire thing is cosmic punishment for that one prank.

(The seven of them saw it back in high school, when it came out in theatres. Eddie hated it, deeply, and after dramatically announcing to the group that he’d “seriously rather _die_ than be stuck living one day for the rest of his life”, Richie bribed each of the losers to help him carry out his most ambitious bit yet.)

Eddie calms down after Richie admits, quietly, that he did it just ‘cause he wanted a reason for Eddie to demand payback, prolonging whatever weird messed up flirtation they constructed for themselves. He realizes, watching Phil Connors wake up yet again to Sonny and Cher, that 1) he doesn’t even get to have a wake-up song, and 2) he wasn’t really paying attention to the movie the first time they saw it, either. Somehow, that doesn’t come as a surprise.

He watches it somewhat for the first time and learns that, in the end, love is the answer.

On day nineteen, they try to stay up through the night and see what happens. It’s Ben that suggests it. Everyone is on board quicker than Richie expects, his heart flaring inside his chest at the fierce, unwavering loyalty that the losers exhibit. _This_ is what he misses, what he remembers more and more every day, little bits and pieces of his friends being the most ridiculously ride-or-die motherfuckers he’s ever met. He can see it in them now, waiting beneath the crust of fear and loneliness that the last three decades have deposited on them all like a layer of sediment, cemented down hard.

Each day, he gets a little better at cracking it. 

Mike and Bill take it upon themselves to buy out what seems like the town’s entire supply of energy drinks, along with a generous amount of snacks and supplies for an actual dinner. They spend the afternoon and evening hunkered down in the living room, bouncing back and forth between catching each other up on their lives, theorizing about the loops, and reminiscing on everything they forgot without even knowing it. 

It’s nice. It’s really, really nice.

At four in the morning, people start to drop off, heads dipping low with blankets strewn over shoulders, pale morning light creeping dimly over the mess laid out on the floor in front of them, theories scribbled on napkins and scrap paper. By five, it’s just Richie and Eddie.

This time, Eddie brings it up first.

“I was in love with you, you know.” He says it casually, like he’s recalling what he had for breakfast that morning. But no matter how nonchalant it sounds, Richie looks up to find tears shining in both of their eyes. It’s almost jarring, late-early haze having fried their emotions already, sending them into overdrive. Eddie sniffles thickly. He’s quiet when he speaks again, teetering on the edge of a whisper and a sob, utterly broken. “I wish I hadn’t forgotten.”

Richie exhales thinly, chest seizing as he tries to get the air out of him. “I know,” he says, sounding just as wrecked, the two of them frozen staring at each other from across the room. It’s cold, in the pre-dawn, socked feet and crossed legs on the carpet. They share a look, a silent apology, knowing: knowing that they could have had a life together, could have loved each other every minute It took away from them, could have done it for real. Richie laughs out of it, a damp, half-hearted sound to ward off assaulting visions of rings and dogs and kids that will never exist in any iteration of his life, of their lives.

“Really waited ‘till the eleventh hour this time, huh?”

Eddie laughs too, hiccuping. “I guess so, yeah.” He inhales, deep, tears finally falling from his eyes and dripping down his chin. “I told you? The other times?”

“Some of them. I told you, a lot of them.”

“Yeah?” Eddie smiles. “I think I would have liked that.”

“You did,” Richie says, a dozen quietly gasping Eddie’s flashing across his mind, “I’m not always—it’s kind of hard to do it seriously when I know exactly how you’re going to react.”

“You seem pretty serious now.”

“Well, you caught me off guard, so.” 

Eddie smiles at that, self-satisfied. It lasts for just a second before he crumples again, arms wrapping around himself protectively as he sniffles loudly. Richie crawls across the floor, cold joints cracking and protesting before he presses his side against Eddie’s, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Eddie melts into it immediately, head falling onto Richie’s chest.

“I’m not sure I like this one so much,” Eddie admits seriously, as if he was there for the others. Richie pulls him in closer, shiver racking through both their bodies. 

“I like them all,” he says, not really paying attention to the words that come out of his mouth, unfiltered. “Maybe that’s bad because I’ve seen you all die a bunch of times and nothing I do seems to be able to stop it, but I do, I like them all. I like getting to do this with you over and over again, seeing the way you react when I tell you I’ve been fucking gone for you since we were nine. It never gets old. The rest of it gets old, but never you. I love you so _much,_ Eds, I’m—I’m so sorry I never told you that when we were younger. I’d live this day a thousand times if I got to go back and tell you, I swear I would fucking do it.”

Eddie’s shuffled back a bit so he can look at Richie and his mouth has fallen open, tears flowing freely now as he takes in Richie’s words. For a second he worries that he’s said too much, too fast, that _he’s_ too much, was always too much, but then Eddie grabs Richie’s face and brings their lips together. 

It’s soft and slow, no urgency to it at all. There’s no point to rushing it; they both know they don’t have enough time, anyway. 

When he opens his eyes, he’s lying down, watching motes of dust float as a blue light fills his room.

(On day twenty, he stays in bed.)

On day twenty three, Richie and Bill die after getting tasered on the front lawn of Bill’s old house. It’s Richie’s fault. Day twenty two was bad, and he woke up on twenty three feeling burnt out and tired. He didn’t stick to the script when he was filling his friends in on the loops—mostly solid at this point, with little tweaks here or there as he remembers different things about them as kids that might help—and he let it slip that the kid from the restaurant dies. It’s been about a week since Richie decided to stop mentioning the kid. 

The last eight times he mentioned the kid, Bill got the cops called on him. On day twenty three, Richie goes with him just to see if that’ll change anything. 

And it may shock you to hear this, but—getting tasered in the crotch and pissing himself on the grass with his childhood best friend is not the task that the universe has set out for Richie to complete. 

On day thirty, he starts to lose it a little bit. He spends some time—a week or two, maybe, he loses track somewhere shortly after twenty seven—hanging out around the town, ditching the losers to scout out what else is happening on this godforsaken day. It’s not likely, but he supposes that technically it’s entirely possible that the key is something completely unrelated to him and his friends and that fucking clown. Slim fucking chance, yeah, but what else does he have to do?

Sometimes, he’ll manage to get one or two of the others to tag along, filling them in on the past loops and discoveries he’s made. 

It’s hard, when he’s been here for a month and counting, finding new memories every day, and his friends are starting from scratch every time. If they could just—if they could just _remember,_ and they didn’t have to go through the same dance every morning _(I’m in a time loop, no this isn’t a joke, no the ritual doesn’t work, yes we can beat It, yes I tried that, and that, and that)_ he knows they could figure it out, together.

But it’s just him, hurtling forward through the same block of time like a mouse on a wheel while his friends stay stagnant, unchanging.

On day forty five, he slips away from the others as they make their death march to the quarry—the first one in a while, actually—and digs through the rubble of Neibolt. It takes some effort but he eventually finds his way back to the cistern, back to Eddie where he lies there lifeless, unmoved from where they left him in the dirt. Where they left him—where Richie left him—nine times, now. This is the one that’s come back again and again, always there to remind him where he started after a string of good loops. 

(Thirty four through thirty eight: convincing the losers to stay at the townhouse, reminiscing and running over as many memories as they could recall, cooking and laughing and pretending It didn’t exist _—just for one day, just this one, just entertain me here, guys_ . _Tomorrow, I promise._ A perfect five for five, first kisses twenty eight through thirty two. It was at that point that Richie really thought that maybe, just maybe, he could settle in here. He could submit to the insanity and just live this day forever, or at least until he was ready to try and figure it out again, until he did it _just_ right and held on tight enough to make it stick. An intermission, of sorts.

But you and I both know that these are luxuries we just don’t have.)

This time, he stays. Maybe next time he’ll pay more attention on the way down, mapping through the rubble instead of just charging ahead. He’ll take Eddie with him, up into the light where he belongs instead of down here in the dark, in the dirt. 

But for now, he stays, Eddie in his arms. First love, last love, only love. It feels right to die together, Richie pressed up against Eddie’s back as he holds him tight, blood drying cold on both of them. He pretends that it’s his, too. 

When he starts to drift off, he thinks that he wouldn’t mind if this was it.

(Unfortunately, Richie is not so lucky.)

After forty five, he spends a couple of weeks not doing much of anything: not trying to convince the others—or even tell them, really—that he’s in this eternal suckfest, not trying to confess his love to Eddie, not trying things just to see if they work. After a while, he doesn’t try to stop them from going after It, either.

(At the start, he would try. The first week was mostly trips down into the cistern, fighting It just because that was the only thing he knew how to do. It was easier to go along with what the losers wanted, which was what they came back to Derry to do. After watching Bev and Ben go down on day twelve, and seeing both Mike and Bill sacrifice themselves for the second and third time, respectively, on fourteen, Richie started trying to see what else he could get them to do. He went through all the basic time loop tricks: sleeping in a different location, trying to leave town, staying up until the next morning, going out without pants, eating donuts every morning, drinking himself into unconsciousness—okay, well, that last one’s not a classic, but whatever. It didn’t work anyway. None of them did.

But no matter what, he _tried._

He’s finding it hard to remember what that feels like, now.)

It doesn’t happen often. Only once or twice, when he’s particularly nasty, they go without him. Those times, they don’t come back. Maybe if he wasn’t nearly two months into this, he would have it in him to panic, to go run and get his friends. But he is, and he doesn’t, so he can’t. 

What he _does_ end up trying at is also fruitless. He probably should have known—not only from the start, that gut feeling in his stomach the first morning he woke up again, but especially now, two months in—but fuck, he’s desperate. Sue him. It’s not like the family that watches him launch himself off the bridge on main street is going to remember it tomorrow. Or, the person whose car he stepped in front of by that intersection near the highway. Or, whoever ended up finding him dangling from the rafters of their favourite barn at the farm.

Or, once: Eddie walks in on him in the bathtub, trying to go out Stanley-style. It might be Richie’s least favourite day.

(Well, his least favourite day _other_ than the ones that end in him cradling Eddie’s dead body. At least Eddie doesn’t have to remember it.)

  
  


As the days repeat, he starts keeping a tally for the things that happen more than once: Eddie dies the most, with twenty out of seventy one days ending in him getting killed, whether it’s It or Bowers or something else. One time, it’s an allergic reaction—he does, as they realize, actually have _some_ allergies. Day twenty four Richie makes a note not to let Eddie eat any more shrimp. Another time, he falls down the well at Neibolt. 

Richie follows shortly after him on nine out of those twenty times. It’s just efficient, at this point. (Altogether he’s died eighteen times, himself. Not one of them has worked, yet.)

Bill gets arrested eleven times, no matter how much Richie assures him nothing he does will ever save the kid. (Well, except for that thing with day ten, but he doesn’t tell him that. Richie knows he would do it again, and again, and again.) Eventually he just stops mentioning the kid. 

He tells Eddie that he loves him forty five times, and forty five times, Eddie says it back. On the days that they don’t fight It, he also ends up saying a lot about his mom (always a wide open shot, one which Richie takes care _never_ to miss) and his wife, and how they both ruined him in very similar ways without him even knowing it. It’s a deep, broken anger, one born from the knowledge that he could have avoided a good part of it had he never forgotten what his mother did to him. He explains that yesterday—“yesterday”, the night of the Jade, which Richie barely even remembers at this point—it started to come back to him, and he immediately drew the similarities between the way his mom and Myra treated him, never letting him linger further than their strings could puppet him. 

He blames himself, most of the times. Richie dismisses the notion immediately and fervently, every single time. _That’s_ one thing that never fades, the anger that Richie feels each time he hears a “but it was probably my fault anyway because…” or a “I’m probably just exaggerating”. 

He tells Richie that that’s why he’s in such a bad mood that morning, Myra having called him the night before to check in and him having this insane outburst, an upwelling of thirty years worth of pain that he didn’t even know was there. He says he’s sorry, for acting like such an ass. He forgot. How could he forget? How could he not see that the way he was, the way he _lived,_ and the things he did to survive, were all clear products of his abuse? 

Richie tells him, every time, that it’s not his fault.

Other times, he just tells Richie he doesn’t feel like talking about it tonight, but that he’ll tell him tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow. _Oh Eds, don’t you know? We don’t get to have a tomorrow. Tomorrow, it’ll be a different us, telling different stories. We live within_ these _walls, darling. I’m banging my head against them, can’t you hear it?_

Anyway.

It’s usually about a fifty-fifty chance on whether or not Bev will talk to him about the deadlights. He hasn’t been able to figure out what makes her fall either way, but he does figure out that they (probably) definitely play a part in all of this. It’s always the same script: she asks him if he went in the deadlights in any of the other times, and he tells her he did, just for a few seconds. Sometimes she tells him that she’s seen some of the things he has—him in the loops, actually living them, her in the deadlights, visions just like her dreams. They never get any further than that, her getting skittish or something ridiculous happening to cut the conversation short.

The deadlights. He briefly thinks that, maybe, he’s stuck in them _right now,_ and that his actual self only ever went through—is going through—one run of today, the first run, and that everything after is just a trick. It’s a reach for sure, but it would mean that Eddie never died, not even once, and that gets his heart racing enough for him to want to believe it, to make it true. And really, it’s not the craziest idea he’s ever had. Somewhere in the first few weeks, one of Eddie’s pissy comments about _Groundhog Day_ had him believing there was some cosmic groundhog punishing him for his crimes against comedy. So, him being stuck in the deadlights and living through a vivid, horrible dream likely isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

But if that’s the case, that leaves him pretty much useless to get out. He’d have to be relying 100% on the losers, back in the cistern, to pull him back to the ground and back to reality like they did with Bev, way back. That thought settles uneasy in his stomach. If that’s the case, then what’s taking them so long? It’s not like they don’t know what to do. But then again, Richie has no way of telling how long he’s actually been here. As he is painfully aware, time is not as solid of a thing as he once thought. 

And then there’s also the part where Bev said her time in the deadlights just gave her flashes of some of the things that would happen in the loops. Richie, on the other hand, has been fully lucid this entire time.

On day seventy two, he gets somewhere. 

He’s sitting sideways on the landing at the top of the fire escape, feet dangling off the edge as Bev lights his cigarette. There’s a smile on her face, something knowing and playful. By now he knows this look, has seen it enough times on all their faces to be able to tell right away: she just remembered something from before.

She looks at him, nose scrunching up as her smile deepens. He wonders, absently, what it’ll be this time, and if she’ll tell him. It’s been a while since any of them remembered something _new_ new, something they hadn’t already remembered on an earlier today. It’s probably the poem, with the way she’s clutching the old newfound postcard to her chest fondly. They’ve already had that conversation a dozen times or so, and Richie is very proud to say he only let the very chiseled cat out of the bag two times. 

She takes a long drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke out slowly, watching the tendrils as they float away into nothing. For a second, she gets that sad, pensive look on her face again, but then it passes and the smile is back. “Hey, you remember the first time we smoked together?”

It’s not at all what he’s expecting, and it catches him so off guard that he actually has to think for a second to see if he _does_ remember.

**How about it—you think Richie's got any clue what Bev's talking about?**

**>[Sure! He seems like a guy who knows some things!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185549#workskin) **

**>[How am I supposed to know, I'm not Richie's brain?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185249#workskin) **


	16. smoking kills

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

Richie thinks about it for a long second and comes back empty handed. “Actually, I don’t, no.”

She smiles brightly and raises her eyebrows, taking a long drag before getting into it. “You were so bad at it,” she laughs, “It was—I think it was the night before my aunt was taking me to Portland, and we were hanging out and I was smoking and you just asked me like, out of nowhere, if you could try it.”

“Oh my god, yeah.” He’s starting to remember it now, vague and fuzzy images of the fire escape to her old apartment and a starry sky coming to mind. “I thought I was actually gonna die.” He remembers so, so confidently taking the cigarette out of her fingers, and then promptly coughing for a full two minutes. 

“And look at you now,” she says, nodding her chin over at the nearly finished cigarette held between two fingers, just like Bev used to do (and like every smoker ever, but Richie didn’t know that when he was fourteen and thought it was her thing, so).

“Ah, yes,” Richie drones with mock pride, holding the cigarette aloft as if it were a champagne toast, “me and my lifelong addiction to nicotine. I’ve come  _ so  _ far.”

Bev snorts and bumps their shoulders together. “Hey, don’t sell yourself short—you also have that  _ handsome face.”  _ Richie barely dodges the hand that comes up to pinch his cheek teasingly.

He hums. “What was that you said about growing into my looks?”

Bev raises her eyebrows and bites back a smile. “I said it would happen,” she tells him matter-of-factly, “and it most definitely did.”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

She smacks his chest with the back of her hand, sending ash flying everywhere. With a slight grimace she wipes it off his shirt, then looks back at him, offended. “Richie Tozier, you are a  _ very  _ handsome man!” she says, pouting as he rolls his eyes. “Stop that. You’re a hot piece of ass and I know for a fact that there are certain people here that agree with me.”

Richie feels his cheeks flush. “Anyway,” he says, “I, uh. What were we—oh, right. You’re actually the reason I started smoking.”

Bev’s eyebrows drop down low, her face an even mix of confused and horrified. “Well that makes me feel great,” she laughs. “You gonna invoice me the hospital bill when you get lung cancer?”

He rolls his eyes. “No, I mean, like—okay, this is supposed to be nice. I didn’t like it when I first tried, obviously, but after you left I would always… whenever I walked by the smoking section outside school the smell always reminded me of you. About a year after you left I was… oh, god, yeah, you’re gonna hate this—” he pauses for dramatic effect and Bev widens her eyes in anticipation. “I got Greta Keene to start nabbing me cigarettes from the pharmacy in exchange for promising I would try to get Bill to ask her out.”

Bev’s eyes go even wider, curls bouncing as she shakes her head in surprise. “She had a thing for Bill?”

“Yeah, I know. Explains a lot about why she was such a bitch to you once you started hanging out with us.”

“I mean, she was a bitch to me before that.”

Richie shrugs. “Okay, maybe she’s just a terrible person. Anyway, the point of this story is that I started smoking ‘cause it made me feel closer to you,” he admits, growing sheepish at the end there. Bev  _ awws  _ and Richie rolls his eyes. “Obviously now I know that it’s because you forgot, but I remember just.  _ Constantly  _ trying to figure out why you’d never called or wrote like you promised you were going to. It made me so mad, sometimes. I’d get into these moods about it every so often; Stan always made me like, take five minutes and sit quietly by myself.” He laughs, Stan’s face all pinched up with concern showing up crystal clear in his mind. “I thought that if I smoked as much as you did I might figure it out.”

Bev looks sad. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. 

Richie waves her off. “Don’t be. After a while I kind of just accepted that it was what it was. I thought a lot about you, though. I wondered what you were doing, what kind of new friends you had. There was—” he cuts himself off, unsure how to say what he wants to say. Bev looks at him patiently, almost knowing, like she knew exactly where he was going.

“There was something about you, I think, that like… made me feel more me? I don’t know, like. I liked who I was when you were around.” He nods to punctuate that statement, happy with how it came out. Bev looks at him with the most cartoonish, heart-melting puppy dog eyes he’s ever seen. He softens. “I think we would have been awesome, if you stuck around.”

Her smile goes watery for a second as she lets her head drop onto his shoulder. “I think we turned out alright anyway,” she says, propping her chin up on his shoulder and giving him a wink. “Oh, and I definitely didn’t have friends,” she adds after a second, sitting back up. Richie quirks an eyebrow. 

“I’m a loser, baby, through and through. Spent most of my lunches alone in the home ec room.”

_ “No.” _

“It’s true. It was lonely as hell, but. I did learn how to sew, so. I guess it wasn’t all bad.”

Richie smiles. “So-so.”

She just rolls her eyes. They sit in a comfortable silence for a little while after that, Bev onto her third cigarette and Richie his second. He can already tell from the way her forehead creases, eyes glazed over and faraway, that she’s thinking about telling him about the deadlights.

“You know,” she starts, as she often does, “I saw you in the deadlights when I was up there.” She turns to look at him as if she’s trying to gauge his reaction, then asks, “did I tell you that already?”

He exhales a silent laugh. “Yeah,” he admits. “You can tell me again, though. Just in case there’s something you know that the other Bev’s didn’t,” he adds with a wink. 

She doesn’t give him anything for that, but he can see the ghost of a smile on her lips, anyway. “Did you ever go in the deadlights?”

He nods. This is usually one of her first questions. “Twice, the first two times. Just for a few seconds, though. Eddie saved me.”

Something about that sets off something in her mind, recognition flashing in her eyes quickly before her poker face comes on again. Always the poker face, always something she’s holding back. Richie wants so badly to find out what it is. 

“You never—for any longer? You never saw anything?”

“No, should I have—did you see me seeing something?” He doesn’t know if that’s how it works, but it’s worth a shot. Bev just blinks.

“I saw you… in the deadlights,” she says, carefully. Richie leans his head forward, waiting, and she gives him a silent  _ I don’t know  _ kind of gesture. He sighs.

“It’s just flashes, I know,” he says, sounding more bitter than he’d intended. “It’s okay,” he backtracks, giving her a smile. “It’s all a fuckin’ mess, anyway.”

She widens her eyes like,  _ yeah.  _ “It’d be so much easier if you could just see them, then you could like, go by process of elimination and narrow it down until you found whatever one breaks the loop,” she jokes. 

Richie doesn’t laugh. “Bev, holy shit,” he says, “I think you might be right. I think I have to—” 

The stairwell begins to shake violently, rattling as someone starts a stomping ascent from below. Richie and Bev both move to peak down through the slats in the metal, all thoughts of deadlights and time loops abandoned.

Well, not completely abandoned—there’s one detail that shuffles up to the forefront of Richie’s mind, taking its time and arriving only when their new friend is halfway up the fire escape and still charging on. And the detail is this: right now, it’s early afternoon. On this godforsaken day where very little changes, the townhouse so graciously welcomes a visitor to its back entrance, each and every today. 

“Bowers,” Bev gasps, fumbling to swing her legs back onto the stairs and stand, trembling. 

“Fuck,” Richie mutters. How did he forget about this? In the past two and a half months, Bowers has killed at least one of them, in total, eight times. You’d think that would make Richie steer everyone very clear of this stairwell at this time, and yet here he is, listening to Bowers’ hiccuping giggles as he closes the distance between them.

“It’s your time,” he says, showing off what was and may still be the world’s jankiest knife. The next couple of seconds seem to move in slow motion, Richie lunging to throw and arm in front of Bev as she shuffles her feet, shifting her weight as she lifts a sneakered foot up in the air to kick Bowers in the face. 

But Richie registers her movement a beat too late and shoves her back anyway, throwing her off her balance and watching her slam into the railing as a sharp, screaming pain tears through his throat, all the air sucked out of his lungs. It’s only as Bev screams that he realizes he’s being stabbed through the windpipe, and he tries to give her an apologetic look as he goes down. His head snaps to the side at a horrible angle with a dull, metallic  _ clang  _ and as he blacks out he thinks that at least this time, he got to die first.

**What would you like to do?**

**>[Take what Richie learned about the deadlights and try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185693#workskin) **

**>[Something else.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185498#workskin) **


	17. two slow dancers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

This time, he’s up and out of bed the second he wakes up. And it’s not a great start, because he forgets that he has a hangover and almost immediately topples over as blood rushes out of his head then surges back in a second later, brain pounding out of his skull. He has experienced many, many cruelties in the past few days—the past few _todays_ —but this fucking bullshit may be the most cruel one yet. Y’know, other than his combination best friend and probably love of his life dying not once, but twice.

Still, the hangover is a close second.

Anyway. Once the room stops spinning, Richie’s in business. He clambers down the stairs and finds the losers, minus Eddie, gathered anxiously in the front room, same spots as yesterday and the two days before that. 

“Eddie,” he says curtly, feeling like he should be snapping his fingers, “the coffee machine is gross and you’re not going to use it. Get in here.” He comes to a stop at the entrance of the room, crossing his arms as Bill tilts his head at Richie’s no nonsense request. A couple seconds later, an annoyed looking Eddie peeks his his head in from the kitchen, frowning suspiciously. 

“Whatever,” he says lamely, slinking into the room and leaning against the bar counter.

Everyone looks at Richie expectantly. He takes a breath. _Alright, Rich, you can do this. Just start talking._

(It’s his failsafe, just opening his mouth and letting whatever shit happened to be bypassing his brain to mouth filter fly out into the world. There was about a 50/50 chance of it going wonderfully vs terribly, and Richie’s seen both.)

No one speaks. Ben raises his eyebrows. _Just start talking,_ he tells himself again _._ Oh, _now_ he remembers. That wasn’t even him that said that in the first place. Stan always did have him figured out, huh?

Anyway.

“Okay, you guys probably won’t believe me, but that’s fine. This is the fourth time I’ve woken up today. I’m stuck in a time loop.” He turns to Eddie and raises a hand before he can speak. “Yes, like fucking _Groundhog Day._ And Bev—” he swivels around to face her, now. “—saw some or maybe all of the loops in the deadlights, back when we were kids.” She puts a hand over her mouth, realization dawning on her face.

Mike doesn’t look entirely convinced. “Richie, we—”

“The ritual doesn’t work,” he says, trying not to feel satisfied at how quickly it shuts Mike up. “but it’s not your fault. You sacrificed your entire life for us, Mike, and we love you.”

“But what about—”

“We can beat It. We already have, three—okay, well, two times. Technically yesterday I died, so I don’t think we can call that a win.” It feels _really good_ to get this out, calm and procedural. Everyone still looks freaked as hell, which, understandable, but he knows that he’ll have them if he has Bev. And with her telling him what she did yesterday, he knows that he does. 

Eddie shakes his head. He looks pale. “Wait, you _died?”_

“You did too, if that makes you feel better.”

He blinks, hard. “How the fuck is that supposed to make me feel _better?”_

Richie considers. “Well, I mean—okay, so, feel free to interject if anyone has any better ideas, but—you died the first time, like the very first time, and it was after that that I, uh, started being in this loop thing. So I’m thinking that it might be, like, a do-over or something, like a chance to save Eddie.”

Eddie’s mouth falls open, eyebrows sky high. Bill stands up. “Okay, so you said this is your… fourth time doing today?” he asks it in the way a father might ask his daughter to clarify which of her friends are dating, this week: wholly confused, but trying his best. 

Richie nods. “Yeah, _numero quatro.”_ He feels a bit loopy, smiling when he catches Eddie rolling his eyes in his peripherals.

Bill sighs. “Okay, so the first time, Eddie died. And the third time, you died. What happened the second time?”

And you see, this is the troubling bit. The one that pretty much caps Richie’s theory in the knees before it can even take its first steps. _Sick, sick universe. Shooting a baby and all._ “Nobody died, and we beat It. That’s—yeah, I know. I don’t know.” Bill nods thoughtfully, clearly still trying to wrap his brain around this. The rest of the room has similar expressions: mouths hinging open and shut, sudden gasps followed by confused deflations, and a general sense of bewilderment across the board.

Eddie groans suddenly, breaking everyone out of their haze. “Richie, I mean—” he cuts himself off, hands up in the air like _come on, man._ Then, Richie remembers.

“Eds,” he starts, more intense than he’d been expecting it to come out. The others seem to sense the shift, too, watching curiously. Eddie leans back a bit, one eyebrow popping up skeptically. 

“Uh huh?”

“Yesterday, you asked me to tell you what I think our lives would have been like if we hadn’t all forgotten each other.”

There’s a beat, then Eddie says, “Well?”

Richie sighs. “Well, you asked me to tell you when I woke up _today—”_

“Then why did you—”

“I’m working up to it, you dick.” He rolls his eyes then closes them altogether, taking a deep breath. He thinks he might hear a quiet, restrained bit of laughter from the other side of the room—Ben, maybe—but he chooses to ignore it. Eddie scoffs and leans back lazily onto the bar counter, one arm propping him up. Richie takes a second to stare at it—a nice arm, a very nice arm, good, cool, yeah—then refocuses.

“If this town wasn’t fucking evil and we didn’t forget each other, I think we would have all gone to college together. Or at least, in the same city. We would have lived together across a few shitty apartments in New York and we would have had dinner parties and Thanksgiving and I think it would have been _fucking fantastic.”_ His voice goes funny at the end there, dangerously close to breaking. He looks up to see his friends regarding him both open-mouthed and open-hearted, smiles practically spilling onto the floor. He flushes, chest feeling tight and stupid, and continues. “I don’t think I’ll ever live to see another tragedy as fucked up as the fact that we didn’t all get to grow up with each other. I—” he cuts himself off for real this time, staring furiously at the floor as he tries to calm down. Bev sniffles from her armchair.

“I think Stan would still be alive,” he says then, which does not help the situation in his throat whatsoever. “And I think he would be the fucking _best.”_ There’s another sniffle, deeper this time, and Richie looks up to see Bill with tears in his eyes—a _blurry_ Bill with tears in his eyes, which. Okay, cool, Richie’s crying. 

“He would know what to do,” he says then, quietly and mostly to himself. 

“He would,” Eddie offers, just as softly. There’s a bit of a laugh around the edges of it, but a sad one, like the way you might laugh at something awful someone said to you when you were a kid, a long time ago but still affecting you, still shaping the curves of your heart and its uneven beat. 

Richie looks over at him through teary eyes and offers a smile that Eddie returns. They hold it for a second then Richie shakes his head, wiping at his eyes and forcing a laugh. “Um, yeah, uh—anyway. I think… I think that we would all have families, and our kids would like, be best friends and whatever,” he continues, encouraged by the soft, melty looks that crop up around him, “I think that—fuck, I think that Bev, _you_ would have resolved your whole postcard thing, jesus christ. Fuckin’, uh, what—January fire?”

“January _embers,”_ Ben corrects, eyes going wide as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Bev whips her head to him, blinking about one thousand times in the process, mouth falling open and half-forming so many silent words that it looks like she’s trembling. They stare at each other in abject shock.

“Oh, good, glad we got that one out of the way,” Richie deadpans, but it only goes so far to conceal the pure joy he’s getting from the scene laid out in front of him. They both whip back to face him, faces fully red, silently demanding an explanation. “Oh, whatever, you guys figured it out today, anyway,” he dismisses, smiling at the odd combination of offended, delighted, and embarrassed he gets from both of them as he waves his hand lazily. 

“As I was _saying,”_ he continues, promptly forgetting what he was saying, “I, uh—oh, fuck, I had a… okay, no, yeah, I—I think we would have been happy,” he states, simply, Bill exhaling loudly through his nose as the tears shining in his eyes finally start to fall. “I think we all would have gotten to trash Bill for his shitty endings when they happened and not just after the fact, years later—” there’s a round of laughs at that, Bill rolling his eyes but smiling anyway, “and I think we all would have lived in really cool houses that Ben designed for each of us, and worn really cool clothes that Bev made—except me, I think. You never did appreciate my Hawaiian shirts so I feel like I would have held that against you, no offense.”

“None taken,” Bev says fondly. 

“I think that—fuck, I think that Mike, you would have gotten to _live_ and do something with your life that wasn’t—that wasn’t this, that wasn’t _here._ And we… we would have gotten to be there with you, every step of the way.” It’s more of an apology than anything, he realizes, as he’s saying the words. He takes a second to gather himself again, picking himself up from where the wave of guilt knocked him over, then keeps going. “Stan would’ve—I think maybe he would’ve _hated_ New York,” he realizes, laughing. “But he would’ve loved us, and I think that would’ve been enough.” Richie pauses to imagine it—a tired Stanley, a little older and a little less proper, he hopes, coming home and collapsing on the couch beside Richie after a long day of classes.. _god_ , he wishes he could have known them all in college.

Eddie clears his throat and stands up straight, intrigued but careful. “What about me?”

Richie snaps back into the now, this life and this today, and looks straight at Eddie as he tries to ignore the breath being punched out of his own chest. 

Three days ago, he would have taken the easy way out. _Well, Eds, me and your mom would have finally gotten married, so I guess you’d be calling me daddy._

But it’s not three days ago, it’s today. _Today’s_ today. 

“Well, for starters, you never would have married your wife,” he says, watching the funny little look Eddie gets on his face at that, half surprised, half offended.

“What, because—because I—” he tries to counter but comes up short, settling for a sigh huffed out as he crosses his arms, waiting uncomfortably for Richie, oddly calm, bordering on serene, to continue. 

“Because I would have married you instead,” he says, finally. The words leave him like a prayer, floating on his breath and shivering out to dance along the dust motes suspended in the pale beams of morning light spilling into the room. They’re not the only thing that’s spilled, Richie’s heart climbing out of throat behind the words and landing with a thud on the floor at Eddie’s feet, fixed and unfaltering.

If Eddie notices the offering, he doesn’t show it. He just stands there, mouth softly hanging open as his expression melts into something Richie has to take a moment to realize he recognizes—something he’s seen before, not in the daylight like this but in the guarded dark of Eddie’s room, a look so quick Richie had thought it wasn’t real. He can see the breath catch in Eddie’s throat, almost hear it from before. 

(It’s nothing like the first time, two todays ago—the twin panic and awe, Eddie sputtering and unconvinced—and suddenly Richie is filled with the desperate and all-consuming need to see every possible version of this, to see every possible shade of Eddie, loved.)

He almost said something, that night, their faces inches apart on Eddie’s bed. _My mom’s coming,_ Eddie had said instead, _pretend you’re asleep._ But Richie was wide awake then, and he’s wide awake now.

“If we’d never forgotten each other, I would have told you I was in love with you and I would have asked you to marry me and we would have gotten a dog and had kids, if you wanted them.” He’s a little out of breath but he keeps going anyway, not even processing the muffled gasps from the rest of his friends or the buzzing in his palms or the air in the room or the floor beneath his feet or anything that isn’t Eddie, standing stock-still in front of him with tears shining in his eyes.

“I would have loved you, every day. Real love, like you deserved—like you _deserve—_ and not like what your mom tried to make you think was love. I would have been _good,_ I would have made sure you knew how much I loved you—how much I love you. I still do, Eds, I still love you. I always did, even when I didn’t know you anymore, I could still feel it, I just didn’t know what it was. But I did, before, and I do, now, and I—I think you might feel it, too.” 

He feels high, or insane, chest heaving. He knows that no previous versions of himself could have (or, would have) done this, vivisecting his heart so that his insides are on full display. And in front of all of his friends, no less. Even the execution of it feels like too much for him, the grandiosity of it all echoing back on him and exposing how bizarre it all really feels. 

But, oddly enough, he doesn’t regret it. Yesterday, Eddie asked him to tell him what he thought their lives would have been like. And this is exactly Richie’s answer: insane, and ridiculous, and entirely wonderful. He gets a glimpse at the others for the first time since the rest of the world dipped out for a bit, and with one look at their faces—astounded, dumbstruck, _delighted—_ he knows that they get it, too. 

Eddie, meanwhile, is still just standing there, very obviously overwhelmed with tears now running in shiny tracks down his cheeks, face a weird split between endeared and terrified. His arms are awkwardly straight at his sides, hands frozen in tense little half fists. Richie briefly wonders if it was too much, too fast, but then Eddie speaks, his voice oddly calm.

“Everyone else please leave.” For a second nobody moves, all of them just looking at him in confusion.

Bill frowns. “Eddie—”

“ _Bill._ I would like you to leave this room please.” Every word is strained, like it takes a great deal of effort to get them out. Richie’s head spins. He starts preparing for the worst, but then he sees Bev’s eyebrows go up as she evidently clues in to something Richie’s still missing.

“C’mon guys,” she says, nodding her head to the side as she stands, “let’s, uh, let’s give them a minute. Slowly, they file out, and Richie is still trying to decipher the hint of a laugh in her voice when Eddie surges across the room and kisses him square on the lips.

And, well, _oh._

He’s not sure what he was expecting, since he already knew that Eddie has feelings for him from two days ago. He really shouldn’t be surprised, and yet, as Eddie threads his hands into Richie’s hair, he feels like he might pass out. But, by some miracle he stays standing, and a moment later Eddie pulls back, chest heaving.

“Sorry,” he says, rather sheepishly, “I thought it would be kind of weird if I did that when they were all just watching.”

Richie laughs, short and loud. He could cry. “Yeah, it probably would be.”

Eddie smiles at that, then looks down again, shy. “I, uh. What you said, I—yeah.”

“What?” 

He rolls his eyes. “I—jesus! I… love you too. Wow, fuck, this used to be so fucking easy.” He looks up at Richie again, almost afraid. He looks at a loss for words, but Richie knows.

“It’s not your fault,” he offers, taking Eddie’s hand in his. Eddie studies him for a second, searching, then nods strongly.

“I love you,” he repeats, more sure. “God, that feels so good to finally say,” he admits with a relieved breath falling out of him.

Richie gives his hand a squeeze. “Right?”

“I love you,” he says once more, louder. His eyes dart back to the entrance of the room and he turns and walks out into the hallway, dragging a willing Richie behind him. Directly around the corner is Bev, Mike, Ben, and Bill suddenly looking _very_ casual.

Eddie takes his hand that’s not being held and gives an aggressive point towards Richie’s chest. “I love him,” he says, kind of angrily but mostly just focused, “and I love all of you shits, too.”

Richie narrows his eyes. “Oh, _baby,_ I thought I was special.” He takes great pride in the immediate reddening of Eddie’s face, along with the sputtering that follows. 

“That’s not what I meant!” Eddie squeezes his eyes shut as the rest of their friends laugh, eating up absolutely every bit of this entire situation. “I mean,” he starts, “I’m—I’m in love with Richie, but also I love you guys very dearly as friends. Jesus.”

There’s a chorus of _aww_ s, and as Eddie is mid eye roll Bev says, “We love you too, Eddie,” and an absolute mess of a group hug forms in the middle of the hallway. It’s definitely cozy, and there’s a lot of morning breath, but there’s nowhere else Richie would rather be in that moment.

They eventually all agree to stay at the townhouse for the day and deal with It tomorrow. Tomorrow, which up until this point has slowly become a sick joke, is a concept that Richie is now happy to dismiss, at least for today. Much to his relief they all just settle into the morning, and Bev and Ben volunteer to get supplies for breakfast once the stores open up.

“What’s up with them?” Bill asks, amused, literally as soon as the door closes behind them. “What happened the other times?”

Richie takes a second to smile at how quickly Bill—and the rest of them, really—has leaned into the time loop thing. “Oh, they’re like, straight up in love. Or will be, I guess.”

Bill’s mouth falls open into a surprised grin. “Yeah?” he prompts Richie on, and Mike raises his eyebrows over a cup of tea, clearly listening.

“Oh, _yeah,”_ he starts, then launches into an explanation of how Ben wrote Bev that postcard when they were kids, then promptly continued to be in love with her for decades. Partway through his explanation he takes a second to worry if the two of them will be mad at Richie for telling the rest of them their personal business—some of it stuff this version of them probably hasn’t even gone over, yet—and with a pang of sadness he realizes that if they are mad, then he can just wait until tomorrow and it’ll have never happened.

Consequences don’t have longevity here, but he supposes the rewards don’t, either.

It ends up being a big, sappy day, filled with a lot of the same kind of reminiscing and catch up as they did after the second today. Many things happen: Bill, Bev, and Eddie form a divorce club, Mike gets them all to help him browse the internet for condos in Florida, and they actually end up watching _Groundhog Day_ sometime in the late afternoon, all piled in the living room together.

(It’s awfully reminiscent of how they used to spend their Friday nights, down to the seating arrangements: Bev curled up on one side of the couch with Mike beside her, and then Ben with his legs neatly crossed beside him. On the floor is Richie and Eddie, shoulders pressed together and hands that, now, are _not_ afraid to touch. The armchair is empty—Stan’s spot—with Bill folded into himself on the floor in front of it, clearly feeling the absence above him.)

Despite the very distracting thing of Eddie’s hand in his, Richie finds himself actually paying attention to the movie this time around. Obviously, he’s seen it before, but as it plays he finds himself not remembering what happens. It’s not exactly surprising—the first time he watched this movie, it was with the losers in the theatres. And now that he thinks about it, he was definitely sitting beside Eddie, so he definitely wasn’t devoting much (or any) of his focus on the screen.

This time, he actually watches the movie and finds out that in the end, love is the answer. 

All things considered, it’s a good day. Maybe Richie’s first, at least in a long time. It’s certainly his first good _today._ So good, in fact, that for a couple of hours, he almost forgets that he’s going to have another one, tomorrow. 

They’re all heading to bed when Richie asks Eddie to stay with him, again. This time Richie lies down on the other side, just to see if it changes anything. 

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” Eddie says suddenly, in the middle of a vivid conversation about coffee preferences (Richie, black with an ungodly amount of sugar; Eddie, skim latte). His voice is thin and strained, taking Richie back to the cistern for just a flash of a second.

“What?”

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” Eddie repeats, taking his hand from where it’s held in Richie’s and placing it gingerly on Richie’s cheek, thumb ghosting over the tips of his eyelashes. “What happens to me if you wake up tomorrow and it’s today again?”

 _Oh._ He hadn’t thought of that, actually. What _does_ happen to this Eddie? What happened to the other three Eddies—okay, well, two of them died, but what happened to the Eddie that fell asleep in Richie’s bed, just like this? What happened to the losers that lost both Eddie and Richie, just yesterday? Do they still exist? Does any of it count? Is any of it even real? 

“Maybe you come with me,” Richie tries, softly. He doesn’t particularly _want_ to think about it, but that ship has evidently sailed, tonight, melancholy settling itself down on top of them like a thick blanket. Eddie gets this thoughtful little frown on his face at that answer, so Richie leans in and kisses it.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says, not convinced. His forehead creases up, evidently deep in thought, and Richie takes the opportunity to just watch, taking in Eddie’s face and mentally putting it up against the one he remembers, the one he spent his entire childhood staring at, and trying to find similarities. 

He’s considering the curve of his lips when Eddie speaks again. “Rich? Did you hear me?”

“Hm?”

“I said I don’t want to forget again.” His eyes are shining, now, face wide open. It cracks Richie apart.

“You won’t,” he lies, “I’ll—we’ll figure it out. There has to be some way.” He kisses him again and Eddie sighs into it, almost a sob.

“I don’t want you to have to keep doing this,” he whispers, sad and desperate, almost onto Richie’s lips. His eyelashes are wet on Richie’s skin and it all suddenly feels so dire, so urgent.

Richie exhales a silent laugh, only a little bit hysterical. “Eds, I want to do this every single day of my life.”

“Not _this,”_ he says. Richie’s eyes are closed, but he knows that Eddie is rolling his. “I mean—” the hand leaves Richie’s skin and he peeks an eye open to see it gesturing vaguely in the air. “—this. The whole, like, thing.”

“Oh, you mean the being trapped in a time loop thing?”

“Yeah, that.” He tries to match Richie’s joking tone but dissolves again before he can get it out, sniffling thickly. He pouts and Richie all but coos, pulling him closer with a muffled _c’mere_ and tangling their legs together, Eddie’s head resting on Richie’s chest. “I just—” he starts again once they’re settled, “I don’t wanna lose you again.”

It’s a loaded sentence, one that makes Richie’s heart crumble in his chest. He wonders if Eddie can hear it. Because the thing is that they don’t just have death or It or twenty four hour time limits to contend with. While they’re dealing with that, they have to somehow unpack and acknowledge the fact that they’ve already _lost_ their lives, decades of unknowingly squandered potential already under their belts. Years and years where they could have known each other, could have spent each night in each others arms—much like this, at a glance, but without the twenty seven year sized holes in their hearts and the ever-present fear of the inevitable, sitting in their throats just waiting to be choked on. This one moment may very well be all the have, and they have to spend it mourning both a past that never existed and a future they’re not allowed to have. The morning is edging endlessly closer and they are simply terrified, and running out of time.

Richie holds on a little bit tighter. “Me neither.”

Eventually, they fall asleep, scared and warm and in each others arms.

Eventually, Richie wakes up, scared and cold and alone.

(There are two constants here: fear, and time.)

He stumbles down the stairs and gives it another go. He can tell that he’s not explaining any of it right this time, his head pounding as he trips over his words. This time, there’s no one on his side, not even Bev, not even when he tells her what she told him. 

Maybe he was naive for thinking he could just keep doing this, that he could bear it on his own. Now, he’s quickly feels himself unraveling at the seams and he knows without a doubt that the only reason he’s made it this far is because he’s had his friends by his side, one way or another. And standing at the landing of the stairs watching them watch him from the other side of the room, it feels like there is more than just physical distance being created. 

As he watches Bill rush out the door (Richie mentioned the kid from the restaurant dying, woops) and Eddie brush past him to go pack his shit (Richie mentioned _him_ dying, woops) he feels his breathing start to shallow. It’s the exact same thing as two days ago, Eddie holding the world record for worst case of the morning grumps and shattering Richie’s heart. It doesn’t hurt any less this time around.

This is definitely the worst start of the day so far. It all falls apart so quickly, his two oldest friends beating it before he even had the chance to ask them to stay. He starts to feel the real weight of it setting in, the panic seizing him to the soundtrack of worried _Richie_ s and rushed _look man, I’m sorry_ s. His brain jumps right into action on clearing out any sort of emotion, packing up the entire conversation into a neat little box and launching it into the darkest and most cobweb-filled corner of his mind, where he stored all the other stressful moments and hard emotional truths. _It’s time to make a joke,_ his brain tells him, _tell them it was all a prank._ Or, he could just go medicate himself to sleep or take a jaunt into the morning traffic so that this day can be over and he can try again tomorrow. _Today._ Fucking hell.

 _Or,_ that other, smaller voice—the one he recognizes from before, from when all his fears were still scary and new instead of just old friends he buried at the start of every day—he could fucking _do something._

**Who should Richie follow?**

**>[Eddie.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185387#workskin) **

**>[Bill.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185345#workskin) **


	18. Bill Denbrough Goes To Jail... 2!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

Richie knows, in his gut, that Eddie won’t leave. He’ll make a fuss and maybe a few threats, but if this Eddie is the same Eddie as yesterday and all the days before, he’ll stay. Sure, he’s scared and pissed off, but Richie knows that the love Eddie feels for his friends is always going to outweigh any amount of fear he may feel. 

Which is why Richie goes for Bill. 

The street is empty when he gets outside, no sign of Bill in sight. He quickly feels the surge of determination fading, helplessness filling him once again. What, did he think that Bill, who left at least ten minutes ago, was gonna just be ambling around outside the townhouse? He’s probably already halfway across town, running around like a fucking madman. 

Richie turns to go back inside and collides directly with Bev.

“Jesus, fuck, sorry,” he says, shrugging in on himself and moving to sidestep her. 

“Richie, wait.” She grabs his arm loosely, dropping it almost immediately. “I…” She looks like she started talking without knowing what she wanted to say, staring at him like she’s searching for the words on his face. Richie raises his eyebrows. Eventually, she decides on a question. “Do you wanna drive or should I?”

“What?”

“To get our boy,” she says like it’s obvious, and Richie can’t help but smile. 

Maybe today won’t be so awful, after all. 

Richie ends up driving. He trusts Bev to be a better eye, both metaphorically and literally. He really needs to get his prescription updated. And besides, he likes driving. Always has. It does some good to calm him down, and Bev in the passenger seat surely helps that along. 

There had always been something, between the two of them. Not romantically, for obvious reasons, but in some sort of way that Richie still can’t quite describe. And it’s fuzzy, but he knows he felt it when they were kids, too. He felt it with all of them, really. It was like he had half a dozen strings all tangled up around his heart, shooting out of him and pulling taut any time one of them was in trouble. It’s an ache he realizes now that he’s felt his whole life, a subtle tug in a direction he never understood. 

It was always sort of different with Bev, though. They got each other on a different kind of level, one that neither of them understood. Richie still doesn’t quite know what to make of it now, either. Whatever it is, it’s clearly at work today.

“I’ve seen this before,” she says, and for just a second Richie thinks she means Derry, flying past them through the windows, and he’s like,  _ yeah man, I know.  _ But then she looks at him, face grave, and he gets it. 

“In the deadlights?” She nods and he tries to remember their conversation from two days ago, on the stoop of the townhouse. It felt like she was holding something back, then. Maybe he can get her to tell him today. 

“I thought… I never knew what any of it was, just…” She trails off and does a vague hand gesture, struggling to find the right word.

“Flashes?”

“Yeah,” she says, “like, dozens of different versions of us, as adults. I didn’t know what it meant then, but with your time loop thing it… It makes sense, I think.”

Richie takes a breath. “You’ve seen Eddie die?” She nods solemnly, biting her lip. “And me?” She looks over at him then, face pale.

She nods again, but doesn’t say anything. They come up to a red light and he takes the opportunity to watch her closely, wondering if she’s trying not to replay all the  _ other  _ times she’s seen them die, and the others, too.

Richie sighs again. “You’ve seen us all die, more than once.” In his peripherals he sees her head turn to him slowly, lip wobbling just slightly.

“Richie,” she says, a little ragged, sucking in a long breath. Her mouth opens and closes a few times, and he shushes her softly. 

“It’s okay,” he says, “we’ll figure it out. I won’t—I won’t let any of us die for real, I promise.” They both know he has no way of making sure he keeps that promise, but she seems reassured anyway. It’s quiet for another minute or two, and then he smiles and speaks up again. “You see anything good?”

“Anything  _ good?” _

“Yeah, we get to do anything other than die or be scared? Like, anything cool?”

She snorts, barely more than an exhale. It takes her a minute but she smiles to herself almost somewhat mischievously, then turns to Richie with raised eyebrows. “Yeah, I saw some cool stuff. Some—hmm, some very long overdue cool stuff.”

He fights the smile threatening his lips. It falters a bit when he remembers this morning, but he pushes that away, too. He knows exactly what she’s talking about.  _ How many times am I going to have this conversation?  _ he asks himself. He doesn’t really mind. 

He turns to her, narrowing his eyes in mock suspicion. “Okay so, you and I actually talked about this two todays ago, but what I wanna know now is did everyone know? Like, did all of you guys just know?” 

Her eyes widen and her tongue pokes out of her mouth, teeth biting down on it. Richie raises his eyebrows expectantly and turns back to the road, waiting as she leans back into her seat, pressing her lips together. After a while she laughs and says, “I think we all knew, yeah.”

_ "Pl ease  _ elaborate on that statement.”

“Okay well I—I think Stan knew, first. He would always be—oh my god, that’s right. Man, I love Stanley.” Her voice goes a little watery at the end and it’s like a punch to Richie’s chest. He realizes at that moment that he had, in fact, been very much avoiding thinking about Stan and the fact that he’s no longer alive up until this point. His fingers twitch on the steering wheel and he feels like getting out and running away from this conversation, the urge taking him over fast and strong. 

Bev runs a finger gingerly along the bottom of her eye, sniffling and shaking her head. “Sorry,” she says, “he, um. He would like, whenever you guys were flirting—”

_ "Flirting?” _

“Oh, you know, when you and Eddie used to bicker and like, go insane if you weren’t paying attention to each other every five seconds.” She looks at him with a teasing smile and Richie rolls his eyes, fully exposed. “Anyway,” she starts again, “he would always be rolling his eyes or shaking his head or just looking pissed, like, like you two were the most annoying people in the world. At first I just thought he actually didn’t like you guys that much, but then I noticed that he was actually smiling the whole time whenever you guys were going at it. You know that weird little way he used to smile?”

Richie definitely knows. He can see it almost perfectly in his head, popping up on Stan’s lips at the oddest of times, like he was trying to hide the world’s funniest secret even though nothing was funny. 

“Yeah, I do.”

“Yeah, well, once I realized  _ what  _ he was smiling at it clicked for me too. After that it was obvious. Then I think… None of ever talked about it, or at least I didn’t, but I think they all kind of knew, too. I remember seeing—oh, that’s right. I remember seeing Ben and Mike share a couple of looks like,  _ do they ever stop?  _ Yeah, they definitely knew. Bill… I know he was kind of caught up in his own stuff most of the time, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t also know.”

He catches her blushing a bit at the end there, and then he remembers, the first two todays, Bev and Bill kissing. He hums. It still worked out last time he interfered with her love life, right? 

“It wasn’t Bill,” he says, watching her tilt her head out of the corner of his eye. “The postcard,” he elaborates a second later when she doesn’t respond. She seems to consider this for a minute or two, not prodding Richie any further. 

They ride for another little while, comfortable silence filling the space beside them as Derry rolls by outside, still no sign of Bill anywhere in the main parts of town. Richie decides to try some of the residential neighbourhoods—he remembers then, from the first two rounds of this hell day, that Bill found out the kid lived at his old house. He makes a left turn and heads for there, hoping that somehow Bill figured it out again.

They’re almost there when Bev snickers again, getting Richie’s attention. “Okay, you asked if I saw anything cool in the deadlights, right? This isn’t that cool, but—I saw you and Bill get tasered, I think.” 

He’s about to ask why exactly that image is  _ so  _ funny to her, words halfway formed on his tongue, when he looks out at the street and slams on the breaks, instead.

“I found Bill,” he says weakly, watching as their friend, fully handcuffed, is led into a cop car, parked outside the old Denbrough home, by two sort of burly officers resembling pigs.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“We—we have to go get him, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, okay, let’s go.” 

The two of them scramble out of Richie’s car, doors slamming and grabbing Bill’s attention, his head shooting up just as the officer move to push it down and into the backseat. 

“Guys!” he shouts, strangled and relieved. “I found him, I found—ah!” The officers shove him into the car, Bill struggling all the way down.

Richie and Bev rush over, smiles more like grimaces as they greet the cops awkwardly. “What, uh, what seems to be the problem here?” Richie asks.

“That’s our friend,” Bev adds rather unconvincingly, wincing down at Bill’s face, now up against the window and spouting muffled words.

One of the officers turns and looks at them with a look so unimpressed it could rival Eddie’s, or maybe even Stan’s. “Your  _ friend  _ just spent the last twenty minutes on someone else’s property and harassing a  _ child,” _ he says, hands on his hips. 

Richie hums. Bev turns away slightly, cringing. There’s a man and a woman—the kids’s parents, presumably, standing angrily on the porch, and a smaller head topped with curly hair and an annoyed look on his face peeking out of the door behind him. Richie sees his eyebrows go up in recognition at Richie, and he groans. 

“Listen, this is all just a big misund—”

“You can meet us at the station downtown if you want to talk to him,” the officer says plainly, already moving to brush by them as he finishes his sentence. Bev scoffs openly, narrowing her eyes and glaring at his back. 

The two of them are left standing there as the cops drive off, Bill in tow. Bev looks at Richie like  _ what the fuck just happened.  _

“I guess I’m—I’m not surprised; if you scream at a child you don’t know, that they’re going to die while their parents are there watching, you’re probably going to get the cops called on you.”

“I mean, yeah.”

“Oh, Bill,” Bev whines, rubbing a hand down her face. “He really hasn’t changed, huh?”

Richie smiles. Maybe it should annoy him, cursed to relive a day that mostly stays the same. This is certainly not an adventure he was expecting, but still—it is nice to know that  _ some  _ things will never change.

As it turns out, it’s actually a lot harder to get someone un-arrested than just rocking up to the station and whipping out a bunch of cash with your rich friend so you can pay bail. And apparently there’s a backup today, so they probably have hours of waiting ahead of them before Bill even goes through the booking process.

It sucks ass, but sitting in a shitty chair under flickering fluorescent lights beats hanging out in the sewer and watching his friends die, so Richie just keeps his mouth shut and waits. 

The others meet them there after an hour or two, a triad of genuine apologies offered up to Richie as they all settle into the row of plastic chairs. They chat for a while but Richie opts to remain quiet, letting himself just take it all in in a rare moment of relative peace as his friends voices wash over him. He feels like he has emotional whiplash or something, constantly teetering back and forth between panic and calm. He can never settle into one or the other, always waiting for someone to say something to set him off to the other side, or for the day to wipe him clean again. 

For now, he tries to soak in as much of the boredom as he can.

They start to get a little antsy around the four hour mark, Ben offering to grab them all something to eat as an excuse to stretch his legs, Bev joining him. Mike ambles over to the reception area to try and get an update on Bill, leaving Richie and Eddie alone. 

Eddie has long since given up on staring at the wall, leg bouncing in place. Richie watches him from the corner of his eye, tries to take this Eddie and reconcile him with the one he first fell in love with. And he’s only known this one for a couple of days, but it’s surprisingly easy to collect the versions together in his mind, all of them falling into the same corner of his brain he reserved for him all those years ago _.  _ There are some parts of him now that are just so similar, so brightly and entirely  _ Eddie  _ that Richie thinks if he saw him on the street, before, he would remember everything just from seeing the curve of his posture or the twitch of his brow. There are other things, though, almost completely foreign to Richie, like the way he kind of nods to some unheard rhythm when he’s staring off into space, lips moving minutely, or the way his cuticles look raw. Eddie definitely wasn’t giving himself manicures when they were kids, but there’s no way he would have ever left his skin open like that, nails digging into the sores every so often. He can practically hear Eddie’s voice lecturing him.  _ Do you know how many germs get trapped underneath your fingernails?  _

Richie feels that ache again, the one mourning all the years they’ve lost. There are so many things about Eddie he doesn’t know, didn’t  _ get  _ to know.

He has to believe he’ll get the chance to find them out.

“I was in love with you, you know.” He says it almost to himself, quietly, nearly too quiet to be heard above the chatter and the bustle of the police station. The words surprise even him, sneaking their way out of his mouth before he could even feel his lips moving. He doesn’t particularly mind.

He turns to face Eddie then, and takes another breath. “I still am.”

“What?” He would almost think Eddie hadn’t heard him, and was trying to get Richie to repeat himself, but he looks too offended to not have heard. Richie can’t help but smile at the growing confusion on Eddie’s face, anger pulling his brows together.

“Yeah,” he laughs, because it really is funny. Because he spent decades of his life trying to push this down, and now he’s on his third time admitting it, but it doesn’t even count. “I’m fucking in love with you. Isn’t that something?” 

He turns back to face forward again, crossing his arms over his stomach and smiling to himself once more. It’s kind of stupid how easy it feels to say it out loud. He knows it’s probably partly because he knows Eddie feels the same; he’s gotten that confirmation twice already, a resounding  _ yes  _ both times—but it’s also easy just because it’s  _ easy,  _ because being in love with Eddie is not even something he has to think about doing, like breathing or blinking. It’s as much a part of him as the scar on his hand, proof of an oath forged by something greater and bigger than himself, bigger than any normal kind of love.

Meanwhile, Eddie is sputtering failed fragments of words, which only makes Richie laugh harder, stomach starting to hurt as he doubles over in his chair. “What, is this a fucking joke? Are you joking?” Eddie fumes. He looks furious, as he often does, but there’s a hint of genuine fear in there too, given away in the way he can’t look Richie in the eye, gaze resting in the space just below his chin, chest rising and falling in tiny, rapid pulses. 

It reminds Richie so much of when they were kids that his brain short circuits for a second, leaving Eddie high and dry waiting for his question to be answered. He raises his eyebrows and finally catches Eddie’s eye, the two of them sharing a long, frenzied second of eye contact before Richie breaks.

“No, I’ve been in love with you my entire life. Seriously, Eds, the whole fucking time.” Despite his best attempts not to laugh out of the sentence, Richie feels himself getting hysterical. It’s a bit alarming, how fast this has escalated out of his control. He supposes watching his best friend—oh, and, as we’ve established multiple times now, the love of his life—die and then having to relive the day over and over has driven him to hysteria. 

He honestly thought he’d last longer than that before he went completely fucking insane, but this is Derry, after all. 

Eddie’s face is flushed a pale, sweaty red, lips pressed together tight. He looks like he’s about to drop. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not,” he says plainly, each word enunciated carefully. 

Richie nods, holding up a hand and taking a moment to compose himself. Eddie is frozen in place beside him the entire time, that unimpressed/terrified hybrid of an expression stock still on his face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Richie offers, leaning back and wiping his hands down his face. “This time loop is rotting my brain.”

“Mhm.”

“Oh, and I’m not joking.”

Eddie softens for a second, taking a breath and swallowing like he’s about to speak before stopping and squinting over at Richie. “Oh, you _ asshole.” _

_ Well, that’s different.  _ “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, mister “I’ve already lived this day three times”. You’ve already fucking told me three times, so you know what  _ I’m  _ gonna say already because I’ve already fucking said it. Jesus.” He sounds like he’s ready to jump Richie, and  _ not  _ in the sexy way, but he’s smiling as he says it, eyes going suspiciously watery towards the end of it. “You fucking weirdo,” he adds, just for good measure, giving Richie a dubious once-over and licking his lips because he is evil.

“Eds—”

“No! I’m not saying it. Fuck you, you already know.” He shakes his head like,  _ unbelievable,  _ and mimics Richie by facing frontwards in his chair and crossing his arms with a huff. 

Richie crosses one leg over the other and props an arm up on the back of his chair, leaning his head down towards Eddie. “You were always so smart,” he says, voice dripping with adoration that is poorly masked as sarcasm. Eddie rolls his eyes and groans. Richie sighs. “You were much nicer about it the other times. I’m feeling pretty rejected here.”

“Feeling pretty reject—” Eddie cuts himself off and promptly grabs Richie’s face with both hands and pulls him over the armrest splitting their two chairs, lips and noses colliding painfully in the middle.

Richie’s arm bumps into the wall as it slides off the back of his chair and he fumbles his way to the back of Eddie’s neck, pulling him closer. He feels one of Eddie’s feet knocking against his and that’s when Richie knows they are making a Scene, making out like horny teenagers in a literal police station.

He really, really doesn’t care. And if Eddie’s tongue wasn’t currently making its way into his mouth, Richie might find a moment to consider the bittersweetness that comes with his utter lack of lasting consequences right now.

But Eddie’s tongue  _ is _ currently in his mouth, so, he does not consider this.

Eddie, on the other hand, evidently does. “Wait,” he says, pulling back. “We might wake up tomorrow and not remember this?”

Richie grimaces.  _ Way to kill the mood.  _ “I think it’s like it’ll have never happened more than we won’t remember. I don’t know. I don’t know how it works.”

Eddie lets his hands drop from Richie’s jaw, dangling them over the armrest between them. Richie grabs them, holding them softly in his. Eddie frowns. “That’s—that’s mean.”

“What?”

“That’s fucking mean. The universe is a dick.”

“That’s what I said!” Richie thinks they might be soulmates. 

They share a smile, just for a second and only partly happy. Then Eddie looks down, thoughtful, and there’s a beat where they both just stay quiet, letting it sink in, winding up the clock counting down the time they have left together.

For this one, at least. “Okay well next time, don’t fucking laugh when you’re telling me.”

Richie exhales and it feels like he’s been punched. “Maybe there doesn’t have to be a next time,” he says softly as he ignores the absent ticking in his chest, damned either way, heart or clock. Now it’s his turn to avoid meeting Eddie’s eyes. He suddenly feels very, very tired, the weight of the past three days catching up with his body all at once and punting him square in the throat. He finds it hard to breathe. “I mean, I don’t know, maybe this is what the universe wants, maybe this is what had to happen to stop the loop?”

As soon as it leaves his mouth he realizes how stupid it sounds. Eddie snorts but it holds no judgement, a thumb coming up to swipe a tear from Richie’s cheek with a tenderness he’d only dared to imagine when he was drunk and hurting for the absence in his life he didn’t even know was there. Another tear falls, catching Eddie’s nail.

Eddie quirks a lopsided smile. “The universe wants us to spend the night trying to get Bill out of jail?”

He rolls his eyes, sniffling. “I mean, technically, it’s Mike, Bev and Ben that are trying to get Bill out of jail, we’re just sitting here being gay and useless or whatever.”

Eddie laughs at that, a full-bellied sound that beams sunshine directly into Richie’s soul. “Yeah, I guess nothing really has changed since the last time we were here.”

“At the police station?”

“No, Derry, you idiot.”

Richie rolls his eyes but smiles anyway, taking Eddie’s hand in his and giving it a squeeze. Some things have changed, but, yeah. Others really, really haven’t.

It’s late, a couple hours after their dinner of takeout shawarma, when Richie somehow finds himself sitting on the ground, opposite Bill on the outside of his cell. 

(They’d finally been allowed to start on the paperwork for bailing him out, and he was allowed a visitor, too. Bill asked for Richie.)

“I could have saved him,” Bill admits after a few minutes of silence, looking up from his lap for the first time since they’d said hello. Richie doesn’t know if he’s talking about the kid, or Georgie. 

“It’s not your fault,” he says anyway, stomach twinging weirdly. Hearing the words in his own voice sends him back into another memory, something not from that summer but before.

“It’s not your fault.” They were facing each other cross legged on Bill’s bed, knees brushing against each other. It was November, it was raining, and Richie had just heard Bill speak for the first time in three days. 

Given, two of those days were ones Bill spent at home. But the last time Richie saw him at school on Wednesday, he hadn’t spoken a single word all day. It was three weeks to the day since Georgie went missing, and Bill wasn’t doing well. 

(“Bill isn’t doing well,” Stan told him at lunch on Friday. “I went to his house last night to drop off his homework for Eddie since his mom wouldn’t let him go in the rain, and it’s like he didn’t even notice I was there.”)

It was Saturday, and it was still raining. Eddie was out for obvious reasons and Stan had stuff to help his dad with at the synagogue, so it was Richie’s turn to check up on their friend. Not that he minded, of course, but it was just _ —Bill wasn’t doing well. _ And Richie, he got a little antsy when things got bad like this. Which is why, after Bill finally croaked out an  _ it’s my fault,  _ he found himself very much out of his element.

“It’s not your fault,” he said, almost automatically. It took a second for it to register before he felt a surge of anger go through him at whatever force of the universe allowed Bill to seriously believe that. He went out to put a hand on Bill’s hand—something his own mother did whenever he was upset, a comforting touch—but something stopped him at the last second, ripping his own hand back as casually as possible. 

Bill just looked up at him, eyes as glassy as Richie had ever seen them, tears threatening to spill over any second. It looked like it was the first time he had ever heard something like that, and it broke Richie’s heart. 

“I told him I was sick. I let him go out in the rain by himself, and now he’s gone. How is it not my fault, Richie?”

Richie hadn’t felt much fear in his life up until that point. The only thing that really creeped him out was clowns, and kids stopped having those at their birthday parties years ago, so he was good. But hearing Bill speak those words sent a shiver up his spine almost immediately. Bill was always someone who thought with his heart first and his brain last, often choosing only to use the former. Hearing him lay it out for Richie so plainly and so logically was really unnerving, and he feared it could be a small glimpse into some deeper, more fundamental damage that had been inflicted upon Bill in the wake of all this. 

Somehow, what made it even worse was the way his voice broke and warbled through the sentence (which, Richie noted, did not have a single stutter). It was an off-putting contrast to the complete lack of expression in both the content of his words and his face—the only clue that Bill hadn’t been switched out with a robot. It was also the way that Richie knew that he fully and completely believed in every single word he was saying. 

There was no possible way that he could spin a joke out of  _ any  _ of this. 

He realized then that that really was the only tool in his arsenal. And upon discovering that it was useless, he started to feel useless, too.  _ It should really be Eddie or Stan, here,  _ he thought to himself panickedly. He felt like a bad friend—who the hell couldn’t comfort someone after their brother went missing? What kind of person  _ was  _ Richie? Bill was  _ always  _ there for him. Why the fuck couldn’t he be there for Bill?

He remembered, then, that Bill had asked him a question. Richie tried to recall what Stan—the real king of logic and reason among the four of them—had said that first night that Bill had called them all over to his house, sobbing over the phone. 

“You couldn’t have possibly known what was going to happen,” he said. Bill scoffed at that, turning away but quickly wincing and caving in on himself again when he caught sight of the rain streaking down his window. 

Richie sighed. “Bill, I’m—” He didn’t know what to do. None of them did, they were just  _ kids.  _ He wanted to make his friend feel better, but he didn’t even know where to begin. His mother’s voice lilted in the background of his mind:  _ a hug can fix just about anything, Richie.  _

Before he had the chance to think better of it, Richie leaned over and wrapped his arms around Bill, pulling him close and ignoring the panicked twinge fluttering in his chest. Bill stayed frozen and for a second, Richie thought he was going to push him away. It flashed in his mind, lightning quick—Bill shoving him off the bed, lips curled up in disgust.  _ Get off me, Richie! _

What happened instead was this: Bill inhaled sharply, not quite a gasp. His body went entirely rigid, and then he threw his arms around Richie’s torso, collapsing on top of his shoulders and exhaling like it had been punched out of him. He wrapped his arms so tightly that his fingers grazed the front of Richie’s ribs, almost hurting him.

Then, he began to weep. 

He had seen Bill cry plenty of times before. It wasn’t an uncommon experience to begin with, and as soon as he knew that his friends weren’t going to make fun of him for it, it was something that Bill did more or less openly. Richie had always kind of admired him for it _ —he  _ was one of those kids every parent wished for, the kind that cried maybe once or twice a year. He didn’t know why, he just was. A lot of the time he wished he could cry like Bill did, just so that he could know that there wasn’t something wrong with him, or so that it wouldn’t be such an ordeal when he finally  _ did, _ as it often was. He was pretty sure that there was a lot wrong with him, and the fact that none of it ever made him cry was probably a bad sign, too. 

Richie didn’t know how long it went on for, but by the end of it his hips were sore from leaning over and his shirt was soaked with snot and tears. And perhaps his own face was wet, too. 

He didn’t really feel like he had done much, just stayed still while Bill used his entire body as a tissue, but when Bill gave him an almost smile and a quiet  _ thank you,  _ Richie thought that maybe sometimes, just staying there was enough.

Now, Bill doesn’t say anything when Richie tells him it’s not his fault. He just sighs and avoids meeting Richie’s eyes. 

There’s a lot of ways in which Bill is like his younger self. Richie studies him the same way he studied Eddie, trying to pin down which parts lined up. He can see him stewing in it, eyebrows twitching every so often like he was thinking hard. That’s something Richie remembers—he’d do it often, a lot of the time before speaking, like he was trying to map the words out ahead of time. His stutter annoyed him a lot as a kid, and it wasn’t unusual for Richie to have to wait out a couple seconds of delay before Bill responded to a question. He has that same intense sort of look, too, like you can tell he’s not really paying attention to anything going on around him. 

He realizes, sitting on the cold, concrete floor, that none of them have really changed that much. They all have the same ghosts, more or less, that they did when they were kids. And yeah, maybe now Richie’s tear ducts are functional and he’s pretty much gotten over the fact that he’s gay, but his initial instinct is still to run at the first sign of any sort of need for emotional depth. It’s not that he’s shallow, it’s just— 

He still doesn’t know what. He wishes he could hug Bill through the bars, thinks that  _ both  _ of them probably need it right now. And maybe he can’t give him a hug, but he can stay there, and that just might be enough for both of them.

He stays until the rest of the losers come waltzing in behind a gruff looking police officer with a key in his hand. There’s a round of hugs, and Richie holds on to Bill probably a little tighter than necessary when it’s his turn. Mike and Ben offer to drive them all home and Richie falls asleep in the back seat of his own rental car, curled up against Bill’s shoulder.

As he drifts off, he hopes:  _ please let this be it.  _

**You're getting closer, but we're still not there.**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185435#workskin) **


	19. Exclamation Point!

He’s up the stairs before he can convince himself it’s a bad idea, flinging the room to Eddie’s door open without so much as a knock. 

“What the fuck?” Eddie jumps back a little bit, hand going up to his chest and his eyelids fluttering as his face morphs from surprise to anger, eyebrows down low and an annoyed little pout on his lips. “I don’t want to hear about your fucking—your time loop shit, Richie,” he says once he’s recovered, whipping back to face his suitcase as he angrily folds up another shirt. If Richie wasn’t so stressed, he might find a moment to tease him about how neatly he packs.

But he is stressed—so, so stressed, so he does this instead: “Listen, Eddie… uh, fuckin’—okay, jesus, cards on the table, uh, I’m in love with you?” 

Eddie whips around, looking—angry? of all things? Interesting. “Is that a fucking  _ question?” _

_ Jesus christ.  _ “Fuck, no, okay, yeah! I’m in love with you! Exclamation point! And I have been since we were actual children so can you just—can you just hear me out?” His voice falters near the end, suddenly lightheaded and queasy. He doesn’t know why he feels so nauseous. This is quite literally the  _ third  _ time he’s done this whole love confession thing, and he  _ knows  _ that Eddie feels the same. And yet, part of him still thinks Eddie’s going to laugh in his face and call him a freak.

Shockingly, Eddie does no such thing. “You’re in love with me?” he asks, soft and halfway to broken, making Richie’s knees give, just a little bit. Any trace of his previous fury is completely gone and Richie feels like he could cry. 

“Yeah, idiot,” he says, like it’s as obvious as grass being green or diet coke being superior to regular. He supposes it is. 

“You don’t even—you haven’t seen me in  _ years,  _ Richie,” he says, shaking his head inwardly. Richie knows what this is; this is emotional backpedaling, and he’s doing it because he doesn’t think that the words that Richie’s saying are true, or something he deserves to hear.

(Richie might know something about that age-old game. One might even say he’s a practiced professional.)

Eddie exhales audibly and continues on. “You’re—Richie, that’s nice, but you can’t possibly—”

“Just like you can’t possibly have been in love with me this whole time, too?” He kind of feels like an asshole, smug as shit, but it gets the job done. Eddie shuts up immediately, looking up with wide eyes, caught. 

The panic only lasts a second, because then Eddie is cluing in and his face scrunches up again. “Oh, you fucking  _ dick,  _ you already  _ knew,  _ didn’t you? ‘Cause of your fucking—the—” He gives up on words and gestures wildly, shaking his head in pure exasperation. 

Richie decides to have a bit of fun. “Man, I make one little  _ Groundhog Day  _ reference and you completely forget how to bluff?”

It hangs in the air for a second before, time suspended, before Eddie’s eyes narrow, murder painted all over his face. Richie swears he can hear the video game sound effects kicking in, an 8-bit  _ round one  _ sure to boom out over an electronic soundtrack any second now.

But despite Richie’s best  _ Street Fighter  _ wishes, the only thing to start is Eddie. “You fucking asshole, Richie. Do you know how long I—also, I fucking hate that movie and you fucking know it. Maybe you don’t remember because everyone’s fucking brains are fucked but I really hated that movie, Richie, and you using that now like thirty fucking years later just to try and trick a confession out of me is  _ really mean.  _ You were it for me, you know? No matter how much I tried to like girls or other guys or  _ literally anyone but you,  _ I was still somehow head over heels in love with Richie fucking Tozier! God knows why, and God knows why I still—you know what? No, I don’t have to tell you any of this.” 

“Eddie, I was kidding,” Richie says weakly, thoroughly impressed. “Also, it was just an excuse for you to pay attention to me.”

“What?”

“The  _ Groundhog Day  _ thing, with the prank. I just wanted you to give me hell for it.”

“That’s a lot of effort just to get someone to  _ yell  _ at you,” he responds, trying to look weirded out but succeeding exactly zero percent, fondness creeping through the slight upward curve of his lips. 

Richie shrugs. “Well, you were never just someone to me.”

Eddie has no comeback to that, mouth falling open as he quickly shuts it again. “Hm.”

“You were it for me, too,” Richie continues, the words scratching up his lungs on the way out. He feels cut up, wide open. He takes a rattling breath. “You still are. That wasn’t a joke, none of it was.” 

“Prove it,” Eddie says then, cocking an eyebrow and crossing his arms, kind of playful but also dead serious. “Convince me you’re not just doing a bit.”

“Convince you?”

“Yeah, knock me off my feet, Trashmouth.” It’s an invitation, one that Richie is more than willing to accept.

Finally, a task that he’s grossly and entirely overqualified for. He takes a second just to stand there, smiling serenely, watching the doubtful anticipation on Eddie’s face shift into something a little more scared. Richie doesn’t think it would be hyperbole to say that he’s literally been preparing his entire life to let one Eddie Kaspbrak know exactly how much he is loved. And he could go on a huge long tangent about it, believe him, he  _ could,  _ but Richie did that yesterday. And wouldn’t it be so much more fun to see if he could get Eddie to crack in just a sentence or two?

“For all of tenth grade, you secretly wanted to go to college to become a lawyer so you could figure out how to make gay marriage legal. So you could marry me.”

Eddie pales, and Richie knows he’s won. 

“How—”

“You told me,” he says, “yesterday.”

Richie can almost see the little  _ loading  _ symbol running in circles on Eddie’s forehead as he stands there, not moving, jaw hanging just slightly open. After a minute he blinks and crosses his arms again, shifting his weight onto one leg as this little smirk shows up on his face.

“What else did I tell you?” It’s almost like a challenge, the way he says it, and then he’s licking his lips, and  _ yeah,  _ Richie’s a goner.

“I mean, just some stuff.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, shifts to the other leg, and puts his hands on his hips. “Mhm?” he hums dryly. 

“Like, how much you always wanted to hold my hand, and—” Eddie huffs an annoyed, impatient sigh and closes the gap between them in two quick strides, grabbing Richie’s face and kissing him, hard. Richie flails for a second or two, caught off guard, before he gets his shit together and kisses back, hands settling on Eddie’s hips. It quickly becomes deeper, almost dizzyingly so, and Richie lets himself get lost in it for a minute or two. After a couple of minutes of hours or maybe even days, all of it still too soon, Eddie pulls away with an almost gasp and leans his forehead against Richie’s, neither of them able to stop smiling with lips puffy and red.

“Did I tell you that I’ve always wanted to do  _ that?” _ he asks, breathless.

“You know, I can’t really remember. Wanna tell me again, just to be safe?”

Richie feels like this day might not turn out so bad, after all. The two of them eventually detach themselves from each others faces and sit down, Eddie asking Richie to explain everything starting with the first today. It’s helpful to have someone to talk it through with, Eddie listening intently. Richie feels better with each of his supportive nods, complete one eighty from earlier this morning. Eddie even has some suggestions of his own that Richie makes note of: maybe next time he could try leaving town and seeing what happens, or stay up until he collapsed from exhaustion and see if he could make it to tomorrow. 

Richie thinks he should start every day with telling Eddie he loves him. It’s a nice thought, but shortly after it enters his mind it withers under the realization of what it implies, what Richie seems to have already subconsciously accepted: he’s not making it to tomorrow anytime soon. 

It takes a couple of hours to go through it all, interruptions and tangential explanations included. By the time Richie finishes he feels both exhausted and recharged, like he  _ could _ take on the day and trying to convince the other losers, but he would much rather just curl up in Eddie’s arms and take a nap. And he probably could, as far as the Eddie part of that question was concerned, but he knows that he probably wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. His brain is running wild, thoughts coming out in fragments then bouncing around the walls of his skull, half-formed.

Here’s what he knows: Eddie is in love with him. Every Eddie so far, at least. Bev has seen flashes of them all dying in the deadlights, and it might be a part of the loops. Mike has sacrificed his entire life for the losers, and would probably do it again. Ben is a mirror to Richie, twin flames carried for three decades. And, well, Bill:

“Guys, Bill got  _ arrested.”  _ Ben’s voice sounds off from somewhere downstairs, calling out the words with disbelief. They hear him barreling up the stairs as Richie and Eddie share a look, a silent  _ what the fuck.  _ A second later, Ben arrives in the doorway and Richie notes that he’s not even a little bit out of breath. 

“Bill got arrested,” he repeats, eyes bulging out of his head as he leans on the doorway like some kind of model. 

“What the fuck happened?” Richie asks. 

“Mike said he went to his old house and was—I guess he was trying to talk to that kid from the restaurant or his parents or something and they called the cops?”

“Oh my god,” Richie says quietly, the image of famous horror novelist Bill Denbrough having a nervous breakdown on some stranger’s porch absolutely crystal clear in his mind. He already knew that Bill had a whole complex—hell, they knew that when they were  _ kids— _ but he didn’t think he had it in him to take it so far that apparently the fucking  _ police  _ had to get involved. Then again, he did convince them all to spend an entire summer sloshing through the sewers, so.

Eddie frowns then, sighing softly. “Georgie.”

Ben smiles sympathetically. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too. I mean, you guys knew him before I did so you probably know more about it, but yeah.”

“I mean, It got his little brother,” Eddie says, eyebrows coming together suspiciously.

“I know  _ that,” _ Ben says, looking as annoyed as someone like Ben can look. “He never really talked about it that much, or him—to me, at least. Like I got the gist of it that summer when he, like—you know those speeches he used to do, and obviously in the cistern. But other than that, I was never really in the loop on that whole thing.”

_ In the loop.  _ Richie suppresses a snort. Meanwhile, Eddie is squinting thoughtfully. “Jesus, yeah, I guess he never  _ really  _ talked about it talked about it… huh. Anyway, yeah, he has a total saviour complex. Poor fuckin’ guy.”

“Yeah, Mike said he seemed, uh, upset.”

“Where’s Mike now? And—like Bill’s arrested, arrested? Like he’s at the police station?”

Ben nods, exhaling a short, soundless laugh like he still doesn’t believe it. “Mike’s heading there now, Bev’s with him. They said they’ll call and give us an update when they get there.”

“I need a smoke,” Richie announces, standing abruptly. He kind of missed out on whatever Eddie and Ben were saying, stuck on Bill and his grief and the fact that before yesterday (four yesterdays ago? five?) he might not have really remembered how or why his brother died and now he had all this baggage to unload again, thirty years later. He’s probably carried it with him all his life, the way they’ve all carried their past, an empty space in their chests filled with lead. 

It’s all a little too sad for Richie to think about right now. He steps past Eddie, running a thumb tenderly over his shoulder as he passes, soothing the noise of confusion he makes when Richie moves to leave. For that he earns a pair of raised eyebrows and a poorly concealed smile from Ben, who, to his credit, says nothing as Richie brushes past him rolling his eyes. 

By the time he’s back up the stairs with his cigarettes, Eddie and Ben are still talking about Bill. He gives them a nod and parks himself out on the fire escape, sitting sideways on the steps like he used to do on the steps up to Bev’s old apartment, after she left town. 

It’s uncomfortable, realizing that his friends are all hurting, in some way. He wants to run away from the feeling, skin crawling, but he forces himself to sit there and face it, at least for as long as it takes to smoke this cigarette. It’s not like he didn’t know they were a pretty fucked up group of people—even before It, they all had some shit that would make them each wanna cry or die or start running and never stop. Maybe that’s why It targeted them in the first place.

Something about that idea doesn’t sit entirely right with him. It feels like he’s implying that they’re weak, or vulnerable, which they’re  _ not.  _ Himself, sure. He’s willing to admit that. But his friends? Every single one of them is brave as hell,  _ was  _ brave as hell, despite whatever it was they were facing. 

A pang of sadness goes through him then, head tilting back to rest against the cool metal. He wishes they could have been there for each other, after Derry. It’s just a rehash of yesterday’s whole thing. He’s not done feeling about it. He thinks he should feel angry—and maybe he will, maybe he did and just didn’t know—but right now all he feels is the crushing loss of it, neverending  _ what ifs  _ running through his mind.

God, he really hopes at least one of them had the sense to go to therapy at some point in the past twenty odd years. Obviously they couldn’t talk about It, but maybe some of the other stuff. Bev and her dad, or Bill and his brother. Christ, Eddie and his mother. Richie knows, both instinctively and from the different bits and pieces of what the Eddie’s of the past few days have admitted to him, that  _ that  _ particular treasure trove of baggage is one that’s never been unpacked. 

Maybe after. Maybe tomorrow. 

Richie is nearly done his cigarette and halfway through a daydream about driving Eddie to his first ever therapy appointment when the stairwell rattles suddenly.

“It’s your time,” a voice says below, and when Richie looks down to find its source he nearly shrieks. 

Right now, it’s early afternoon. And according to the past four days of data, Richie knows that today, around early afternoon, a certain stab-happy someone pays the townhouse a visit. 

And really, he shouldn’t be surprised when Bowers clatters up the stairs and plunges his knife into Richie’s chest as he stumbles backwards over the step back up into the house. Why not, right? The universe has to get its kicks somehow. He’s willing to accept this, but he draws the line and calls it cruelty when Eddie comes rushing out at the commotion and gets his very own stab, right through the throat.

The last thing Richie sees before he fades, as he’s bleeding out chest down through the slats in the steel, is Eddie’s limp body flying down from above him and landing on the pavement below with a loud, wet  _ thud. _

**Looks like that's two for greasy mullet Jack Nicholson, and zero for Richie. You sure you're actually _trying_ to help him?**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185435#workskin) **


	20. who needs enemas with friends like these?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: discussion of sonia kaspbrak's a+ parenting, suicide, substance use/abuse

Okay, now this shit is starting to get old.

Richie swiftly realizes that this isn’t something that’s going to be stopped by random, blind attempts at fixing what he thinks the universe wants fixed. He realizes that he might never wake up without a hangover ever again. These are things he comes to know without any sort of confirmation, just simple facts popping into his consciousness with an understated and absolute certainty.

On day ten, he watches Bill die for the first time. It decides to take him in the fun house, and they only find out once they realize he’s not at Neibolt like all the other times, when they get to the fair and find the police talking to the kid, drenched in blood.

By day fifteen, he’s watched them all die. 

On day sixteen, he doesn’t get out of bed. 

“Richie, what the fuck,” Eddie says from his spot at the door, standing there awkwardly just as Bill and Bev did before him. Richie mutters a joke about sending in the B team—not even his joke, Eddie’s joke, in one of the early ones—and rolls over so that he’s facing him.

“Come lie with me,” he says, almost laughing in anticipation of the look that flinches itself onto Eddie’s face.

“I beg your _pardon?”_

See, the thing is that Richie’s starting to get the hang of some aspects of this hellish joke. He knows that Mike and Bev are always the ones that believe him first. He knows that Ben will quietly follow along with whatever Bev says, and likewise with Bill for Mike. Sometimes Bill goes down hard, he’s a bit of a wildcard—it’s nice to know that some things never change. Eddie is always the hardest to crack—you see, there’s someone, somewhere, that thought this wasn’t hard enough on its own, and decided to trap Richie on the day where it’s not his best friend but a literal storm cloud waking up in Eddie’s body every morning without fail. One that had a very heated fight with his wife the night before after an onslaught of unsolicited memories about the atrocities committed against him by his very own mother.

Richie knows this, Eddie’s told him as much. This morning is a very bad morning for one Eddie Kaspbrak: a fact that Richie gets the joy of testing (and proving!) over, and over, and over again.

All this aside: much like in their adolescent days, Eddie’s the one that gives Richie the hardest time about it all. But also like their adolescent days, he’s pretty transparent in his stubbornness.

Eddie’s always been easy for Richie to read. And if he hadn’t been sporting a cool pair self-loathing goggles his entire childhood, Richie just might have figured out the kid was in love with him, too, and maybe then he wouldn’t be where he is now. But he is here, now, and only now, for the next foreseeable forever, so he resolves to leave the dwelling for when he can do it with Eddie properly confessed to and in his arms. So far, he doesn’t have a bad track record.

He knows that Eddie responds best to Richie being direct about it all, and usually won’t believe him on the whole time loop situation unless he offers up some saucy tidbit about Eddie’s life that the stubborn son of a bitch previously believed to be unmistakably private. He knows that he gets flustered if Richie acts like he knows too much about his feelings, dancing around the confession like a drawn-out bit, and he really likes it when Richie does it all soft and quiet. 

He’s not quite done seeing what happens. He might not ever be. Eddie might be his one reprieve in all of this, despite the sarcasm and the initial sting of his disbelief. That part never stops hurting, but he does start expecting it. Still—there hasn’t been one day where Eddie hasn’t come around, doubling down to believe Richie just as fiercely as he dismissed him, always an apology here or there. He gets used to the cold bed in the morning, the seizing in his chest. He throws himself into the puzzle, each day a new opportunity to unearth another piece of Eddie Kaspbrak: his major in college, (not English, like they’d talked about in high school; business, which he hated but stuck with after switching into it on a whim halfway through his first semester) his favourite drink, (gin and tonic) what he really wished he’d done with his life (something with cars, maybe hands on). Richie takes note of every part, filing them away for those first few seconds of each blue morning that come to suffocate him from the inside out without fail.

“It’s _Groundhog Day,_ and I’m Phil Connors,” he says sleepily, reaching back for his glasses (not cracked, never cracked) so that he can see the confusion cropping up on Eddie’s face.

He catches on quickly this time. “Yeah, Bill said you—”

“Stuck in a time loop? That’s me, yeah.” He lets out a giggle, thinking about Bill making his way down the stairs, dumbfounded as he announced to the losers that Richie was ‘nothing but a mouse in the universe’s psych lab’. He wonders, briefly, if there’s a cosmic ethics board. 

“Richie.”

“You never believe me,” he laments, throwing an arm over his forehead for good measure. Maybe it was sleep deprivation that was making him a nutjob about this, all the times before. Just fifteen more minutes of lying down and the acceptance that there probably isn’t anything he can do to make it to tomorrow is giving Richie a serious case of _who gives a shit._ Maybe he really is Phil Connors. 

Eddie crosses his arms, as he often does. “Oh, is that so?”

“Yeah, _but!”_ He removes the arm from his head and thrusts his pointer finger up triumphantly. “Here’s the thing, Eds. You don’t love your wife. You don’t even _like_ her. You once wrote my name in a library book and then you threw your library card into the river over the bridge on main street because you thought the librarian would know you were in love with me. You’re still in love with me, and I’m in love with you, so would you please just uncross your arms and use them to remove your head from your ass and fucking _co_ _me lie with me?_ Would you do that?”

Eddie sort of just stands there for a minute or two with his jaw hanging open, which is understandable. Richie is learning to be patient, so he waits quietly. 

Many, many eternities later, he pointedly uncrosses his arms and places his hands on his hips. “You’re in love with me?” It’s half accusing, half disbelieving.

Richie matches his tone. “Of course I am, dipshit.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says.

(He climbs into bed, anyway.)

On day seventeen, he tries Mike’s hallucinogenic water, for science.

On day eighteen, he gets killed in the park by Paul Bunyan.

On day nineteen, they try to stay up through the night and see what happens. It’s Ben that suggests it. Everyone is on board quicker than Richie expects, his heart flaring inside his chest at the fierce, unwavering loyalty that the losers exhibit. _This_ is what he misses, what he remembers more and more every day, little bits and pieces of his friends being the most ridiculously ride-or-die motherfuckers he’s ever met. He can see it in them now, waiting beneath the crust of fear and loneliness that the last three decades have deposited on them all like a layer of sediment, cemented down hard.

Each day, he gets a little better at cracking it. 

Mike and Bill take it upon themselves to buy out what seems like the town’s entire supply of energy drinks, along with a generous amount of snacks and supplies for an actual dinner. They spend the afternoon and evening hunkered down in the living room, bouncing back and forth between catching each other up on their lives, theorizing about the loops, and reminiscing on everything they forgot without even knowing it. 

It’s nice. It’s really, really nice.

At four in the morning, people start to drop off, heads dipping low with blankets strewn over shoulders, pale morning light creeping dimly over the mess laid out on the floor in front of them, theories scribbled on napkins and scrap paper. By five, it’s just Richie and Eddie.

This time, Eddie brings it up first.

“I was in love with you, you know.” He says it casually, like he’s recalling what he had for breakfast that morning. But no matter how nonchalant it sounds, Richie looks up to find tears shining in both of their eyes. It’s almost jarring, late-early haze having fried their emotions already, sending them into overdrive. Eddie sniffles thickly. He’s quiet when he speaks again, teetering on the edge of a whisper and a sob, utterly broken. “I wish I hadn’t forgotten.”

Richie exhales thinly, chest seizing as he tries to get the air out of him. “I know,” he says, sounding just as wrecked, the two of them frozen staring at each other from across the room. It’s cold, in the pre-dawn, socked feet and crossed legs on the carpet. They share a look, a silent apology, knowing: knowing that they could have had a life together, could have loved each other every minute It took away from them, could have done it for real. Richie laughs out of it, a damp, half-hearted sound to ward off assaulting visions of rings and dogs and kids that will never exist in any iteration of his life, of their lives.

“Really waited ‘till the eleventh hour this time, huh?”

Eddie laughs too, hiccuping thickly. “I guess so, yeah.” He inhales, deep, tears finally falling from his eyes and dripping down his chin. “I told you? The other times?”

“Some of them. I told you, a lot of them.”

“Yeah?” Eddie smiles. “I think I would have liked that.”

“You did,” Richie says, a dozen quietly gasping Eddie’s flashing across his mind, “I’m not always—it’s kind of hard to do it seriously when I know exactly how you’re going to react.”

“You seem pretty serious now.”

“Well, you caught me off guard, so.” 

Eddie smiles at that, self-satisfied. It lasts for just a second before he crumples again, arms wrapping around himself protectively as he sniffles loudly. Richie crawls across the floor, cold joints cracking and protesting as he presses his side against Eddie’s, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Eddie melts into it immediately, head falling onto Richie’s chest.

“I’m not sure I like this one so much,” Eddie admits, serious as if he was there for the others. Richie pulls him in closer, shiver racking through both their bodies. 

“I like them all,” he says, not really paying attention to the words that come out of his mouth, unfiltered. “Maybe that’s bad because I’ve seen you all die a bunch of times and nothing I do seems to be able to stop it, but I do, I like them all. I like getting to do this with you over and over again, seeing the way you react when I tell you I’ve been fucking gone for you since we were nine. It never gets old. The rest of it gets old. but never you. I love you so _much,_ Eds, I’m—I’m so sorry I never told you that when we were younger. I’d live this day a thousand times if I got to go back and tell you, I swear I would fucking do it.”

Eddie’s shuffled back a bit so he can look at Richie and his mouth has fallen open, tears flowing freely now as he takes in Richie’s words. For a second he worries that he’s said too much, too fast, that _he’s_ too much, was always too much, but then Eddie grabs Richie’s face and brings their lips together. 

It’s soft and slow, no urgency to it at all. There’s no point to rushing it; they both know they don’t have enough time, anyway. 

When he opens his eyes, he’s lying down, watching motes of dust float as a blue light fills his room.

(On day twenty, he stays in bed.)

On day thirty, he starts to lose it a little bit. He spends some time—a week or two, maybe, he loses track somewhere shortly after twenty seven—hanging out around the town, ditching the losers to scout out what else is happening on this godforsaken day. It’s not likely, but he supposes that technically it’s entirely possible that the key is something completely unrelated to him and his friends and that fucking clown. Slim fucking chance, yeah, but what else does he have to do?

Sometimes, he’ll manage to get one or two of the others to tag along, filling them in on the past loops and discoveries he’s made. 

It’s hard, when he’s been here for a month and counting, finding new memories every day, and his friends are starting from scratch every time. If they could just—if they could just _remember,_ and they didn’t have to go through the same dance every morning _(I’m in a time loop, no this isn’t a joke, no the ritual doesn’t work, yes we can beat It, yes I tried that, and that, and that)_ he knows they could figure it out, together.

But it’s just him, hurtling forward through the same block of time like a mouse on a wheel while his friends stay stagnant, unchanging.

On day forty five, he slips away from the others as they make their death march to the quarry and digs through the rubble of Neibolt. It takes some effort but he eventually finds his way back to the cistern, back to Eddie where he lies there lifeless, unmoved from where they left him in the dirt. Where they left him—where Richie left him—nine times, now. This is the one that’s come back again and again, always there to remind him where he started after a string of good loops. 

(Thirty four through thirty eight: convincing the losers to stay at the townhouse, reminiscing and running over as many memories as they could recall, cooking and laughing and pretending It didn’t exist _—just for one day, just this one, just entertain me here, guys_ . _Tomorrow, I promise._ A perfect five for five, first kisses twenty eight through thirty two. It was at that point that Richie really thought that maybe, just maybe, he could settle in here. He could submit to the insanity and just live this day forever, or at least until he was ready to try and figure it out again, until he did it _just_ right and held on tight enough to make it stick. An intermission, of sorts.

But you and I both know that these are luxuries we just don’t have.)

This time, he stays. Maybe next time he’ll pay more attention on the way down, mapping through the rubble instead of just charging ahead. He’ll take Eddie with him, up into the light where he belongs instead of down here in the dark, in the dirt. 

But for now, he stays, Eddie in his arms. First love, last love, only love. It feels right to die together, Richie pressed against Eddie’s back as he holds him tight, blood drying cold on both of them. He pretends that it’s his, too. 

When he starts to drift off, he thinks that he wouldn’t mind if this was it.

(Unfortunately, Richie is not so lucky.)

After forty five, he spends a couple of weeks not doing much of anything: not trying to convince the others—or even tell them, really—that he’s in this eternal suckfest, not trying to confess his love to Eddie, not trying things just to see if they work. After a while, he doesn’t try to stop them from going after It, either.

(At the start, he would try. The first week was mostly trips down into the cistern, fighting It just because that was the only thing he knew how to do. It was easier to go along with what the losers wanted, which was what they came back to Derry to do. After watching Bev and Ben go down on day twelve, and seeing both Mike and Bill sacrifice themselves for the second and third time, respectively on fourteen, Richie started trying to see what else he could get them to do. He went through all the basic time loop tricks: sleeping in a different location, trying to leave town, staying up until the next morning, going out without pants, eating donuts every morning, drinking himself into unconsciousness—okay, well, that last one’s not a classic, but whatever. It didn’t work anyway. None of them did.

But no matter what, he _tried._

He’s finding it hard to remember what that feels like, now.)

It doesn’t happen often. Only once or twice, when he’s particularly nasty, they go without him. Those times, they don’t come back. Maybe if he wasn’t nearly two months into this, he would have it in him to panic, to go run and get his friends. But he isn’t, and he doesn’t, so he can’t. 

What he _does_ end up trying at is also fruitless. He probably should have known—not only from the start, that gut feeling in his stomach the first morning he woke up again, but especially now, two months in—but fuck, he’s desperate. Sue him. It’s not like the family that watches him launch himself off the bridge on main street is going to remember it tomorrow. Or, the person whose car he stepped in front of by that intersection near the highway. Or, whoever ended up finding him dangling from the rafters of one of the old barns at Mike’s farm.

Or, once: Eddie walks in on him in the bathtub, trying to go out Stanley-style. It might be Richie’s least favourite day.

(Well, his least favourite day _other_ than the ones that end in him cradling Eddie’s dead body. At least Eddie doesn’t have to remember it.)

  
  


As the days repeat, he starts keeping a tally for the things that happen more than once: Eddie dies the most, with twenty out of seventy one days ending in him getting killed, whether it’s It or Bowers or something else. One time, it’s an allergic reaction—he does, as they realize, actually have _some_ allergies. Day twenty four Richie makes a note not to let Eddie eat any more shrimp. Another time, he falls down the well at Neibolt. 

Richie follows shortly after him on nine out of those twenty times. It’s just efficient, at this point. (Altogether he’s died eighteen times, himself. Not one of them has worked, yet.)

Bill gets arrested eleven times, no matter how much Richie assures him nothing he does will ever save the kid (well, except for that thing with day ten, but he doesn’t tell him that. Richie knows he would do it again, and again, and again). Eventually he just stops mentioning the kid. But before that he goes with him, once, just to see if it changes anything. They both get tasered and die on the spot. 

He tells Eddie that he loves him forty five times, and forty five times, Eddie says it back. On the days that they don’t fight It, he also ends up saying a lot about his mom (always a wide open shot, one which Richie takes care _never_ to miss) and his wife, and how they both ruined him in very similar ways without him even knowing it. It’s a deep, broken anger, one born from the knowledge that he could have avoided a good part of it had he never forgotten what his mother did to him. He explains that yesterday—“yesterday”, the night of the Jade, which Richie barely even remembers at this point—it started to come back to him, and he immediately drew the similarities between the way his mom and Myra treated him, never letting him linger farther than their strings could puppet him. 

He blames himself, most of the times. Richie dismisses the notion immediately and fervently, every single time. _That’s_ one thing that never fades, the anger that Richie feels each time he hears a “but it was probably might fault anyway because…” or a “I’m probably just exaggerating”. 

He tells Richie that that’s why he’s in such a bad mood that morning, Myra having called him the night before to check in and him having this insane outburst, an upwelling of thirty years worth of pain that he didn’t even know was there. He says he’s sorry, for acting like such an ass. He forgot. How could he forget? How could he not see that the way he was, the way he _lived,_ and the things he did to survive, were all clear products of his abuse? 

Richie tells him, every time, that it’s not his fault.

Other times, he just tells Richie he doesn’t feel like talking about it tonight, but that he’ll tell him tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow. _Oh Eds, don’t you know? We don’t get to have a tomorrow. Tomorrow, it’ll be a different us, telling different stories. We live within_ these _walls, darling. I’m banging my head against them, can’t you hear it?_

Anyway.

It’s usually about a fifty-fifty chance on whether or not Bev will talk to him about the deadlights. He hasn’t been able to figure out what makes her fall either way, but he does figure out that they (probably) definitely play a part in all of this. It’s always the same script: she asks him if he went in the deadlights in any of the other times, and he tells her he did, just for a few seconds. Sometimes she tells him that she’s seen some of the things he has—him in the loops, actually living them, her in the deadlights, visions just like her dreams. They never get any further than that, her getting skittish or something ridiculous happening to cut the conversation short.

This time, it’s a Mike-mandated bedtime. 

Richie convinced them to go for It tomorrow, opting not to tell the group about the loops but confiding in Bev, privately. Sometimes it’s easier, like that, when he’s too tired to deal with the onslaught of questions—always the same fucking questions.

Mike wants them to get a good rest before they get back down into the sewers. “It’s going to be an early start,” he says, “we have a lot to prepare for the ritual.” Richie almost, _almost_ breaks.

He lies in bed, waiting for time to fold him up and set him back out, creases and all, at the start of the day once more. He goes through cycles, of wanting to figure it out and not caring. He thinks he might be on an upswing again, because he finds himself going over his and Bev’s conversation again, parsing for any possible clues. 

The deadlights. He briefly thinks that, maybe, he’s stuck in them _right now,_ and that his actual self only ever went through—is going through—one run of today, the first run, and that everything after is just a trick. It’s a reach for sure, but it would mean that Eddie never died, not even once, and that gets his heart racing enough for him to want to believe it, to make it true. And really, it’s not the craziest idea he’s ever had. Somewhere in the first few weeks, one of Eddie’s pissy comments about _Groundhog Day_ had him believing there was some cosmic groundhog punishing him for his crimes against comedy. So, him being stuck in the deadlights and living through a vivid, horrible dream likely isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

But if that’s the case, that leaves him pretty much useless to get out. He’d have to be relying 100% on the losers, back in the cistern, to pull him back to the ground and back to reality like they did with Bev, way back. That thought settles uneasy in his stomach. If that’s the case, then what’s taking them so long? It’s not like they don’t know what to do. But then again, Richie has no way of telling how long he’s actually been here. As he is painfully aware, time is not as solid of a thing as he once thought. 

And then there’s also the part where Bev said her time in the deadlights just gave her flashes of some of the things that would happen in the loops. Richie, on the other hand, has been fully lucid this entire time.

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything. Nothing’s adding up, but he barely has anything to try and put together in the first place. He’s been here seventy two fucking days and has almost _nothing_ to show for it. 

Richie takes a breath and sets his glasses on the night stand, rubbing his eye with the heel of his palm. Going into another spiral isn’t going to help anything. Each day he gets a little bit more from his friends, learns another trick to get them to say something new. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t, but he has them here, and that’s better than being completely alone. _You’re not alone,_ he tells himself, reciting it silently with each inhale. No matter how much he feels it, he _isn’t alone._ They’ve proved to him, literally day after day, that they’re there for him.

And that’s what keeps him going, in the end. Keeps him trying.

And besides. He always has tomorrow.

**Well, this is a lot. Wanna take a break and fuck around with the laws of nature for a bit?**

**>[Yeah, why not?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185498#workskin) **

**>[No, I'm good. Let's keep thinking about the deadlights.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185693#workskin) **


	21. Stanley Uris Takes A Shower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: implied/referenced self harm, suicide

When Richie wakes up the next morning, something feels different. He still has a hangover, the sun still isn’t up, and his glasses are still intact. It’s still today, clearly, but there’s something off. He can’t place exactly what it is, especially not in his current state, still groggy and half-asleep, but he knows that there’s  _ something  _ wrong.

Or, maybe not wrong. Maybe just different. 

He stays in bed as long as he possibly can, blanket pulled up to his chin until he knows he only has a few more minutes until they send someone up to get him. Eventually he drags himself out and ambles toward the bathroom, knots in his shoulders already starting to loosen at just the thought of a hot shower. 

And then, the something different: the door to the bathroom is locked. 

It takes a second to register, but as the handle jiggles with no reprieve, Richie starts to feel a panic rushing through him. Sure, every today is slightly different. There’s an infinite number of variables and Richie can only control so many of them. But for a lot of them, he doesn’t have to. For instance, he doesn’t have to worry about making coffee in the morning because he knows that Eddie will always examine the coffee maker with a look of scorn and declare it too gross for any of them to use. He knows that if he stays in bed longer than eighteen minutes after he wakes, one of the losers will come up to get him. He knows that he’ll get some fond laughs as everyone consecutively remembers his habit of oversleeping, and the time Stan poured orange juice down his nose to wake him up at a sleepover that one time. He knows that, more or less, everyone will say the exact same things they always say and each and every day it will wear him down, bit by bit. 

Another thing that he knows is that he never has to worry about waiting for a shower in the morning, because he and Ben are the only ones that use this bathroom, and Ben always finishes with his shower before Richie wakes up. 

So: locked door, panic, as it goes. Richie frowns and brings a hand up to knock on the door, freezing halfway. He takes a second to listen to the chatter downstairs but it sounds the same as it always does, no voices missing from the mix. He turns back to try knocking again, and then the door suddenly swings open in front of him, steam rushing out of the room and hitting Richie square in the face.

“Oh, jesus, Richie,” a voice says. Richie blinks the hot air out of his eyes and squints to find someone, unsurprisingly, standing right in front of him. There’s a half-scared, half-annoyed pinched up sort of expression, a wet mess of brownish curls, and the faintest halo of white, papery scars lining the edges of his face.

_ "Stan?”  _

A pair of achingly familiar eyes narrow. “That is what they call me,” he says skeptically, leaning back a bit to blink at Richie—who, meanwhile, has begun to cry, a steady stream of tears flowing down his cheeks while his chest twitches with fragments of breaths—with concern. “Are you—are you okay?”

Richie throws himself onto Stan before he can even finish the question, full on wheezing as sobs rip out of him one after the other, zero to a hundred in the span of about four seconds. Stan goes rigid but doesn’t push Richie away, arms coming up to hold him hesitantly. Richie thinks he might actually drop, oxygen chased out of his brain by screaming choruses of  _ Stan is here Stan is alive Stan isn’t dead he’s here he’s here he’s here. _

“Of course I’m here,” Stan says, almost inaudible over Richie’s cries. “Mike called. What else was I going to do?”

At that, Richie pulls back and grabs Stan’s wrists, flipping them over and searching frantically for any sign of what happened. He knows it happened—before today, before any of this started, outside of the very small room in which there were things he could change—and yet, Stan’s skin is entirely unmarred and all his blood seems to be where it belongs, on the inside of his body.

“Richie?” Stan tilts his head down, trying to catch Richie’s eye. This is when it sets in that he’s really and truly  _ here,  _ heart beating just like the rest of them. He watches Stan watch him for just a second then pulls him in tight again, laughing through his tears like a maniac. He knows that he’s probably worrying Stan, and he’s probably causing a scene—he feels Stan’s chin shuffle on his shoulder and his hands leave his back, just for a moment, as if he’s giving a silent  _ I have no idea  _ to someone watching from the top of the stairs—but he absolutely does not care. 

Stan eventually settles on rubbing circles into Richie’s back, and after a minute or two Richie remembers how to use his lungs properly and pulls back, just a bit, so he can just stare at this face he knows and doesn’t, this face he thought he’d never see again. 

Stan gives him a worried smile and opens his mouth to speak again but Richie beats him to it. In his dazed state, bewildered, he says, “Your hair is wet.”

Stan’s eyes widen. “Yeah, I took a shower,” he says dryly, frowning as Richie gasps.

“Good!” he says, “good. Don’t—don’t ever take a bath, please.” He feels like he’s high but he can’t be bothered to snap himself out of it, entire body shaking. “Stan, you have to promise me that you won’t take a bath.”

Something on his face twitches. “I don’t even like baths. Richie, what’s going on?”

His own adolescent voice comes to him unprompted.  _ An excellent question, Staniel. It appears you’ve cheated death and are here to save me. Or, I’m just going crazy.  _ Richie shakes his head and settles on a manic, breathless, “I don’t know.”

Stan sighs and nods curtly, as if this might have phased him at one point in his life but not now. It’s such a familiar action that Richie almost starts crying again. He’d always thought Stan kind of acted like an old man when they were kids, weird sense of humour and mannerisms he found odd back then, but now he’s _ completely _ grown into it.

“I’m stuck in a time loop,” Richie says suddenly, because he thinks it might be relevant. He watches as Stan’s eyebrows slowly rise. “Also, you’re—you were? Obviously you’re here, wow, but for the past seventy two days—which is just today, I’ve done seventy two todays—you’ve been dead.”

“I’ve been  _ dead?” _

“Yeah.”

“And today I’m not? For the first time?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that explains a lot.” Stan nods down judgmentally, referring vaguely to Richie and his current state.

“Yeah, I—”

“Guys?” Bev is standing at the top of the stairs looking like she regrets opening her mouth. “Everything… okay?”

Richie smiles. “It’s  _ Stan!” _

“Apparently I died.”

“Oh, okay. Uh, cool. You guys wanna come downstairs?”

It feels incredibly right that Stan believes Richie as easily as he does. The others follow easily after, gathering on the floor of the living room and waiting patiently as he explains what he’s been through and what he’s done. It takes a while because every couple of minutes, he sees Stan move or smile and breathe, and he has to take a break so that he doesn’t cry. 

Eventually, Stan just huffs a sigh like he’s annoyed, even though he very much isn’t, and gets up, dusts off the front of his pants, then crosses the room and sits himself down next to Richie and loops their arms together. 

“Does that help?”

Richie responds by starting to cry, again, and Ben gets up and returns with a glass of water a minute later. At first, the rest of them had been (rightfully) pretty freaked out by Richie telling them Stan was dead—after all, they just had dinner with him the night before, apparently—but after an hour or two they’d realized that there was no way Richie could be this shaken up if he wasn’t telling the truth. And he is, still shaken up, for pretty much the entire morning. There seems to be nothing he can do to stop his hands from trembling. He can tell that he’s not processing it, not even beginning to wrap his head around what the fuck this means or if Stan is going to stay alive, now. 

“How can you be so chill about this?” Eddie asks Stan at one point, still annoyed at the whole time loop concept. Shocker.

Stan just shrugs. “I mean, we’re dealing with a demon clown that can take on the form of dead people and make paintings come to life. I don’t think it’s that much more of a stretch to think that it could construct something like this just to fuck with Richie.”

They all let the idea sit for a second. Mike speaks up first. “It can definitely mess with time,” he says. “Did you go in the deadlights?”

Oh, now that’s new. Bev perks up. “Yeah,” he answers, “but just for a couple of seconds, the first two times. I didn’t see anything.” He feels like a broken record, slipping into autopilot again. He turns to Bev, now. “You’ve told me you saw flashes of us, now, when you were in the deadlights. Last couple times we talked about it we decided it was probably actual glimpses into the future ‘cause you saw stuff we’d done in the other loops.”

“Did you see me?” Stan asks. She shakes her head sadly and he tilts his head, humming, then turns back to Richie. “Tell me about me dying?”

Richie’s taken aback by the question, as are the others, blinking in surprise. He wonders, briefly, how Stan can be so nonchalant about this all. And it’s doubly shocking after spending seventy odd days busting his fucking ass trying to convince all the other losers that this was happening that Stan just accepts it, first go. He doesn’t have anything to go off of other than the Stan he knew when they were kids, so it’s hard to try and figure out what’s making this Stan so… fine with it? Richie doesn’t know. Something might be off, here, but it also just might be Stan, full of surprises as he often was. 

“Uh,” he starts, unsure of how to go about this. Would Stan want the others to know some other version of himself died the way he did? Richie knows that  _ he’d  _ sure as hell be embarrassed if it was the other way around and Stan was airing his alternate self’s dirty laundry. Or, rather, bathwater. Stan was pretty private when they were young, especially after It. He wasn’t around keeping all these crazy secrets or anything like that, but Richie remembers him developing a tendency to withdraw from the others after everything went down that summer.

Stan clearly senses the conflict because he gives Richie a pointed look, one that says  _ it’s okay.  _ It’s almost like he  _ knows,  _ and before Richie can start to unpack whatever the hell that might mean, he starts talking again.

_ Just do what you always do—start talking.  _

“Well, yesterday we went to the Jade and you never showed up,” he explains, “and we got these messed up fortune cookies that spelled out some shit like—fuck, what the fuck was it?” He leans his head back against the couch cushion, squeezing his eyes shut as he tries to remember last night, which is really many, many nights ago. “Shit, I don’t know. Some freaky shit about you. After that Bev called your wife and she told us that you… uh, you killed yourself in the bath.” He says the last part quickly, not wanting to pay any sort of attention to the words. He remembers  _ that  _ clearly, remembers hearing the words and feeling like he was going to throw up or pass out or both. 

There’s a couple of soft gasps around the room. Richie looks up and sees BIll frowning deeply, Ben bringing a hand up to cover his mouth. 

Stan looks sad, faraway. “How did she sound?”

“What?”

“My wife, what did she—”

Bev speaks up. “She was devastated, Stan,” she says softly, almost pleading. 

(Suddenly, Richie remembers a younger Bev, legs curled up to her chest on the couch in Richie’s basement and telling him, with tears in her eyes, that she was worried about Stan. Richie remembers thinking  _ yeah, no shit.  _ For a moment he can’t recall why he’d meet her concern with so much cynicism but then he sees a younger Stan, near-convulsing in the Hanscom kitchen: out of it and frantic like some kind of wild animal, eyes glazed over with dull panic as Mike and Ben are holding him back, blood running down the sides of his face and staining the white tile under his struggling feet. “What’s happening to me?” he’d screamed, over and over, hands like claws coming up to tear at the scabs lining his face.

Remembering it, Richie thinks that  _ devastated _ is a great word choice.)

_ Jesus fucking christ,  _ he realizes then, putting past and alternate present together. Maybe—probably—this isn’t the first time they’ve been here. He gives Bev a worried look, a bit more panicked than he was intending, and she sighs.

“I saw—well, I didn’t see her, but. In the deadlights,” she explains, even though it’s not what Richie was trying to say. He drops it, making a note to ask her about it later, maybe on the next today. 

Stan, meanwhile, gets this watery sort of smile on his face, and ducks his head down to wipe at his eyes. “I’m glad I didn’t, then.”

Eddie frowns. “What do you mean?”

He takes a breath, blowing it out in a long sigh. “I thought about it,” he says quietly, “when Mike called me. I didn’t think I was going to be, uh, strong enough, to come back and face It again. I thought you guys would have a better chance without me.”

“That’s stupid,” Bill says then, shrugging at the unimpressed look Mike gives him.

“I’m sorry,” Mike says, turning back to look at Stan. 

Stan just waves him off. “It’s not your fault,” he says, “I was… I had some other issues, anyway.”

“Don’t we all,” Richie comments, under his breath. Stan snorts and raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah?”

Richie still feels jittery and sort of hysterical, so it’s not a surprise when the next sentence slips out of his mouth uninhibited. “You wanna talk about issues? I’ve spent the last forty years in the closet.”

He’s met with six jaws dropping, some of them shutting immediately and others hanging wide open. Stan’s face curls into pure delight, and Eddie, beside him, looks like he’s short-circuiting. Richie drops his face onto Stan’s shoulder.

“Fuck. Yeah, okay, I’m gay. Sorry to steal your spotlight,” he mutters, half laughing anyway. There’s a careful bubble of silence after that, one that no one is brave enough to break.

“Th-that’s g—that’s gay—oh, fuck, I mean—that’s great, R-Rich.” Bill forces out, grimacing as he stumbles. Mike dissolves into laughter on his shoulder, mirroring Richie and Stan. 

“That’s awesome, man, thanks for telling us,” Ben says earnestly. If Richie were meaner he’d roll his eyes at the roll call of congratulations that follows.

“Yeah, yeah, this isn’t my first time coming out to you people, so you guys can skip the pride parade.” He says it casually, dismissive, but his smile so wide his cheeks begin to hurt. Stan bristles proudly at his side.

“Statistically, there had to be at least one of us,” he says matter-of-factly.

Richie groans. “Oh god, I forgot that you’re an accountant now.”

“Eds, you okay?” Bev asks then, and Richie turns his attention to Eddie who is, now, blinking back into reality, eyes wide as everyone looks to him.

“Hm?”

“I asked if you were okay? You look like you’re having a, uh, moment over there.”

Eddie nods kind of insanely, like he was finishing off a slam poem only he could hear. His eyes dart over to Richie and then to the ground, panicked, as Richie’s smile devolves into a shit-eating grin. “Yeah, I’m good,” he mumbles.

Richie sees Stan’s eyes narrow for a second, and then he turns back to Richie and widens his eyes, tilting his head back towards Eddie with a hopeful grin. Richie sighs, exasperated, and Stan only smiles wider.

Well, at least that settles the two-month old question of  _ did everybody know? _

Richie clears his throat. “Anyway, I know you all knew, so you can stop acting surprised.” Suddenly none of them can meet his eye, embarrassed. Eddie’s chest is moving hummingbird fast, tiny breaths going in and out of him as he digs his nails into his shin. 

“Also, I’m in love with Eddie, but you all knew that, too.” 

He anticipates the whip of Eddie’s head before it happens, heart skipping at the expression of shock he  _ still  _ hasn’t tired of.

“Well, I’m gonna sit not here,” Stan says, standing suddenly and leaving the space between Richie and Eddie empty. Eddie stays frozen for a couple more seconds—everyone’s watching, everyone’s curious, everyone’s holding their breath—and then his mouth falls open and his eyes narrow.

“Oh, you dick, you already  _ know.” _

It’s funny. He’s said that a few times before. 

Richie smiles, caught, and Eddie just shakes his head. On the other side of the room, Mike, Bill, Ben, Bev, and now Stan, perched on the couch above Bill, all watch on in giddy, scandalized silence like it’s a reality TV show. Eddie stands and walks out of the room, muttering praises like  _ I can’t believe you  _ under his breath as he falls out of earshot. 

Stan lifts his chin and crosses his arms. “How many times has he done that?”

“About seven, I think.”

Richie feels like he might burst, he has so much love inside him.

When noon rolls around, Mike and Bev volunteer to go out and get some lunch to bring home, while Stan tells Bill and Ben, without an ounce of subtlety, that he wants to show them some more pictures of Patty in the other room. 

Richie and Eddie stay in the living room and work out their shit for the seventy third and first time, respectively. There’s kissing, and crying, and laughing, as there most often is. And of course, Richie’s done this many, many times before, but the unexpected addition of Stan being in the mix is throwing him off, making him excitable and distracted than usual. He can barely get a thought out without losing focus, and Eddie calls him on it.

“You know, I know we would joke around that you had ADHD when you were a kid and all, but jesus, Rich, you definitely have ADHD.” If it was coming from anyone else it might sound mean, but from Eddie’s lips it’s just light and sweet. And, he’s not wrong.

“I know. I literally have ADHD, dude. I’m pretty sure I told you guys when I got diagnosed.” He squints and tries to search for the memory, somehow still hidden after seventy three opportunities to dig everything up. He doesn’t have any sort of reference point as to what or how much a normal person might remember about their childhood, so he doesn’t know if he should be troubled or not by the fact that there are  _ still  _ things lurking in the muddy space below his consciousness. 

“Did you?” Eddie asks, tilting his head and squinting in the same way.

Richie frowns. “I’m pretty sure…” He feels like he can remember having that conversation with someone other than his parents. And then,  _ oh.  _ He’s thrust into another memory as he zones out of the here and now, looking dumb and slack-jawed.

It was the summer after sophomore year and he’d just turned sixteen. His present was a big ol’,  _ hey, your brain works kinda wrong  _ and a piece of paper to prove it. This also happened to coincide with the slow but very steady journey of one Eddie Kaspbrak and his adventures in puberty, a journey which Richie was spectator to nearly every single day since none of them had jobs yet and there wasn’t anything to do in Derry in the summer other than spend every waking minute splashing around in the quarry with your friends that now had shoulders and inklings of chest hairs.

Needless to say, Richie was incredibly close to losing his apparently already very slippery mind. Stan had stepped in about a week later.

“Richie? You alright over there?” They were on their bikes, lazily making their way to Bill’s before they all headed to the quarry. Richie was deep inside his own brain, psyching himself up to be a Normal Person for the day and not spend the entire time staring at Eddie. Ben had almost caught him last time—probably did, if Richie was being honest. And Bowers was in jail, sure, so he didn’t have to worry about getting murdered if word got around, but still. He needed to start being more careful. 

“Richie?”

“Hm?”

They’d almost stopped pedaling then, and Stan was looking at him thoughtfully. “I asked if you were alright? You seem distracted. Is everything okay?”

Richie takes a breath. Stanley’s always been a double-edged sword—he was usually direct, getting straight to the point. That meant that Richie never had to run his mind trying to figure out if he was mad at him or was really saying something else, like Ben sometimes did. It also lent well to his kind of humour, dry and unexpected with just impeccable timing. Richie liked to bounce off of it, when Stan let him. But the other side of that was that Stan pulled no punches when it came to confrontation, giving Richie no room to hide behind jokes or vague answers. 

“Of course, Stangelina! Just thinkin’ bout—bout, uh…” he trailed off lamely, whatever comeback he’d had ready on the tip of his tongue disappearing before he could release it into the world. He tried not to grimace as Stan raised an eyebrow, unconvinced and unimpressed.

“You can talk to be about the ADHD stuff, you know,” he said, softer than Richie was expecting. “If you want. I know it’s not the same but I can kinda get it.” He looked down at his handlebars and Richie knew that he was talking about his OCD. And he was right, it wasn’t the same, but he knew that Stan has been carted back and forth between doctors since he was seven, and Richie had to spend four hours in an office doing weird pointless tests and answering questions about himself so yeah, he could kinda get it. 

“Thanks,” Richie said, carefully, earning a small smile from Stan. “It’s just…” He didn’t even know if he  _ wanted  _ to talk about it. It wasn’t on his mind until just then. Until just then, his mind had been entirely  _ Eddie Eddie Eddie,  _ as it has been for probably his entire life. Sometimes it was scary, how much he thought about Eddie, and how hard it was to stop. “I don’t know,” he eventually settled on, “Sometimes I just—I feel like my brain can’t make up it’s mind about being a brain. Sometimes if I have to look at just one thing, like in school or when I’m doing homework, it’s like literally impossible to get myself to focus on it. But other times when I’m looking—uh, if I’m paying attention to something or whatever it’s like, the only thing I can focus on or even  _ wanna  _ focus on for like, hours.” 

“Like what? What do you focus on for hours?”

(Stan, in all his sixteen year old wisdom, was pretty sure he knew what they were talking about.) 

There was a rush of panic. “I don’t know. I just mean, like, in general.”

(Richie, with all his sixteen year old heart, loved him not for acknowledging it.)

“Hm. Okay,” Stan hummed, giving Richie a very definite look out of the corner of his eye but evidently choosing not to push it any further. Richie felt a deep, surprising sort of gratitude fill him up. He was fully expecting an eye roll or a  _ come on, Richie,  _ as Stan often gave him. No bullshit here, no sir. But clearly, then, some bullshit had been allowed.

“Maybe it would help if you… talked about it? The thing that’s taking up all your focus?” 

Richie could tell that Stan was trying to keep his face neutral, which, for Stan, was no small effort. Where Richie had no verbal filter, Stan was lacking in facial control. So, the fact that he was consciously reigning it in for Richie? Not a great sign. He definitely knew. And even if he didn’t  _ know  _ know, he knew that something was up. 

Richie nodded tightly, not meeting his gaze. “Yeah, maybe.”

“You know I’m here for you, right? No matter what?” The tone of his voice tore Richie’s eyes up from the pavement—Stan’s brow was furrowed, serious. There was a lot of weight in this conversation, none of which Richie was ready to even try to carry.

He smiled, and put a foot up on a pedal. “I know, Stanley.” 

He thinks, sitting on the living room floor with Eddie in his arms, listening to the quiet sound of chatter in the other room, that Stan might have known all along. And when his phone lights up with a text that says  _ finally  _ a couple minutes later, he knows.

Later, in the evening, after lunch and a lot more sitting around doing nothing, when they all feel the uncertain tomorrow creeping around the corner—they get down to business.

“Here’s where I’m at,” Richie starts, “Dying doesn’t work. Saving everyone doesn’t work. Any sort of combination of dying and saving doesn’t work.”

“Have you tried leaving town?”

Richie inwardly cringes at the memory of his car skidding off the highway. “Doesn’t work.”

“Have you written anything down?”

“Doesn’t work. Everything resets with each loop. As far as I know, the only thing that carries over is my thoughts.”

“Have you confronted your past?”

Richie tries not to laugh. “Yeah, doesn’t work.”

Eddie speaks up for the first time in a while. “Have you tried self-improvement?”

“Have I—what?”

He rolls his eyes. “Like  _ Groundhog Day?  _ What, you can’t tell me you haven’t watched that since this thing has started, you literally—”

“Pranked you and made you think you were stuck in a time loop. Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ve  _ watched it.” _

“And?”

“And I’m pretty sure this is as good as it gets, Eds,” he says plainly, gesturing to himself with disdain. He hardly believes It, or the universe, cares about how good of a person he is. Eddie just rolls his eyes again and squeezes Richie’s arm.

The rest of them pick right back up.

“Have you solved any crimes?”

“Have you found anyone else that’s stuck?”

“Have you  _ committed  _ any crimes?”

“Have you eaten donuts for breakfast?”

“Have you tried ki—hm.”

“Killing myself also doesn’t work.” He sighs, looking down to avoid any concerned glances that may come his way. “I think—okay, hear me out,” he starts again, louder. “Bev saw this all happening in the deadlights when we were kids. As far as I know, she’s seen every loop—every day I recap and every day so far, she’s confirmed.” He knows it hasn’t been  _ every _ day, what with all the death and Richie’s stretches of staying in bed and what not, but more or less. “I think… I think I might need to go in the deadlights too, so I can see. Maybe then I can start to figure out what’s going on and what needs to happen to break this thing.”

“Oh, wait, was that not obvious?” All eyes fall to Stan, folded up neatly on the armchair, Bill sitting by his feet. He has this kind of annoyed, kind of amused look on his face, and he tilts his head and sighs. “That was like, my first thought.”

Richie blinks, incredulous. “And you didn’t care to share with the class?” 

“Well apparently I was dead, so.” He shrugs with a self-satisfied smile on his face that Richie can’t bring himself to be mad about. Instead, he just sighs and lets the idea sink in as Stan continues, slightly less of a little shit. “It feels like the natural progression of how this is supposed to go, at least to me. Obviously you’ve met several dead ends with all of what would seem to be the logical paths to take. You said the very first time ended with Eddie dying?”

Richie nods, and Eddie squeezes his arm once more, thumb smoothing over the skin gently. “Yeah, in the cistern.”

“And then saving him the next day didn’t work?”

Richie nods again, and Stan sighs quietly, thoughtfully. He looks troubled, and not in a fun  _ I’m just messing with you  _ kind of way. He stays quiet for a moment or two, then shrugs plainly. 

“I guess you’re just going to have to try, and see what you find out,” he says, face oddly still. 

“Yeah, I guess so.” He almost feels stupid, seeing it laid out so simply for him now. Despite the echoes of cold that run through him when he thinks about what he has to do, he feels warm. He knew that Stan would know what to do. He always did— 

Or, well, most of the time.  _ This  _ Stan always does. 

As the evening carries on, Richie feels the dread sink in. The universe has awarded him one kindness with Stan being here today, but if he’s learned anything from the past two months of his life, he knows that he’s not going to get another. This today, he’s alive. But all the next ones? 

It is very likely that this is the last time he’s ever going to see his best friend.

Later, in the kitchen, when it’s just the two of them left awake, Richie cradles a mug of tea to his chest and says, softly, “I don’t want you to be dead when I wake up.” He’s tired, and his guard is down. He’s realized—both from today and from looking back on their childhood—that this is something Stan draws out of him, allowing him to be his most unmasked self, both because he knows he can, and because he knows Stan won’t let him get away with trying to be anything else. 

Stan smiles sort of sadly. “I hope I’m not,” he offers, knowing there’s nothing he could do about it, anyway. A man well-acquainted with Death greets the end not with a smile or a frown, but with a quiet exasperation, almost like coming home:  _ for real, this time?  _

“But if I am,” he adds, leaning back against the counter as if he was nesting into it, “could you… could you do something for me?”

“Of course.”

Stan frowns then, just slightly, then softens. “Could you make sure Patty makes it out of this okay? I think that—I think she would really like you. All of you.” His voice is barely audible and Richie has to lean forward to hear him. 

“Yeah, Stan. Of course. I’ll—of course.” Stan nods sort of sadly and his lip begins to tremble as he ducks his head down, hair falling over his eyes. Richie exhales and crosses the kitchen with a soft  _ hey  _ and pulls Stan into his arms. 

“I wish we all could have stayed together,” Stan whispers, voice thick and wet with tears. “I wish you could have met her, I wish it all was different.”

And Stan is just preaching to the fuckin’ choir here, because  _ yeah.  _ Richie wishes, too. He squeezes Stan a little tighter. “I know,  _ god  _ I know. Me too, Stan.”

They stay like that for a while, together in the kitchen for one last time. There are certain things that both of them have come to accept: Richie, about this room he’s been trapped in, and Stan, about the nature of his life and the way it’s going to end.

“I love you, Richie.”

“I love you too.”

**Are you ready to keep going?**

**>[Too bad, you have to. You're almost there. Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185693#workskin) **


	22. starry eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

“Oh, Richie says, “Yeah, I think I do remember that.”

It was early June—the last night before Bev was leaving for Portland, her aunt’s job starting that next Monday and subsequently robbing Bev of a proper summer with her friends, one that didn’t include killer clowns and trips to the sewers. The evening air was warm, and the stars were in full force without the light of the moon to blot them out. She was stretched out over the fire escape of her old apartment, head resting beside Richie’s on one of the metal steps, smoke mingling with the sharp smell of the rusted steel. There were little coppery flakes sticking to her hair, still short from when she asked Richie to cut it again after school one day in the front courtyard. 

He was really, really going to miss her.

“Can I give it a try?” He doesn’t know what possessed him to ask, or to want it, in the first place, but Bev handed it to him with no question anyway, just a smile and raised eyebrows. He made sure to grab it in between his fingers, like the way she always held it.

“Okay, so—yeah, like that,” she guided him as he brought it to his mouth, lips wrapping around it hesitantly. He’d seen her do it _hundreds_ of times, how hard could it really be? “So you’re gonna wanna make sure you—”

He started coughing violently before she can finish her sentence, throat burning horribly. “Jesus fucking christ,” he said, ripping it out of his mouth and holding his fingers out for her to take it from him. “You seriously fuckin’ do this shit every day?”

She laughed, quiet, nose crinkling up in that way he liked. _In that way you wish you_ liked _, liked,_ a voice intruded. He pushed it away, forcing his cough into a laugh to match hers. 

“You get used to it,” she explained, shrugging as much as she could lying back against the steps. Richie just shook his head. 

They were quiet for a while after that, just the sound of cicadas buzzing in the distance and the stars watching them from overhead. Richie watched back. If he looked at them long enough he could swear they were moving, slowly revolving around each other like some sort of dance—but he knew enough from their science class that year that that’s impossible, so he just shrugged it off and enjoyed the slow shimmer of it all, wondering if Bev was looking at the same stars. They would get like that sometimes, weirdly in sync as if their brains were on the same sort of wavelength or something. Looking to each other at the exact same time when something happened, making the exact same movie suggestions, knowing exactly what the other was about to say or do, before it happened. Little things like that. And it wasn’t often, but it had happened enough that they both took note of it, Richie asking her one night if she felt it, too. 

It was like this invisible string tethering them together. Richie felt it with all his friends, the most taut and secure—safe—when they were all together, but something about the way he was tied to Bev felt different. At first he reasoned that it was because she was a girl and he’s a boy, but at that point Richie knew that he didn’t even like girls, so.

That night, the string felt like it had some extra tension held in its fibres, something keeping their shoulders pressed together as the two of them got lost in the night sky. If Richie took off his glasses it would look like those paintings his mom liked so much: pretty, but kind of hard to make out the details. He did that, sometimes, if he just wanted to look at the whole thing stretched out in front of him, no mind to any of the particulars that made up the universe. Other times, he wished he had a better prescription so he could see _more._ He didn’t know how to explain it—he didn’t try, didn’t want to, the odd, sure feeling that it was something for him and only him—but it was like there was something he was looking for among those lights, something that would just click and fix everything. What that everything was that needed fixing, Richie had absolutely no idea, but on those nights he kept looking, anyway.

That night, he kept his glasses on. 

Once Bev’s cigarette was reduced to nothing, she stubbed it out on the post of the railing and held her hand, palm facing in, above them. “It’s going to come back,” she said, any inkling of amusement from before completely gone from her voice.

Richie let his head fall to the side and watched the frown on her face deepen. “You mean, if It comes back?”

She just shook her head. “No, I—when I was in the deadlights, I saw It.”

“You saw It?”

“When we’re older, like our parents ages. I saw some of—” she stopped cold, hugging her arms around herself. “I saw us, fighting It.”

Richie grimaced. “Oh, well shit.” It really didn’t seem like she was in the mood for levity, but he earned a small smile for his troubles, anyway. 

“Yeah,” she said, exhaling. He could tell that there was something else she wanted to say, something she was holding back. She turned to look at Richie, finally, smoke-tinged breath coming out in shaky little puffs on his cheek. 

“What is it?”

“I saw you, too,” she admitted, voice suddenly watery and broken. A tear slipped off her cheek and through the metal grate, and Richie found himself at a loss.

“What?” he asked weakly, dread beginning to pulse through him. 

She abruptly sat up, wiping the tears off her face with both her hands and pulling her knees in close to her chest. Richie mirrored her, slowly, waiting. 

“I just—” she started, eyes narrowing as she cut herself off. “I… I saw you, in the deadlights. And I…” she trailed off, fresh set of tears threatening to fall as she bit her lip, hard. Richie wanted to reach out and put an arm around her, comfort her in some way, but he knew that would only make things worse, so he put his hands between his knees and tried to give her a telepathic hug, instead.

She shivered, despite the warm night. “I don’t want them… I don’t want _you_ to have to go through it. I don’t know how to change it.” She turned to Richie with the last part, eyes pleading. “When we’re older, you have to help me change it.”

“Of course, Bev. We all will, we made a promise,” he said, holding his hand up to show off the scar matching hers. She just exhaled, short and defeated, looking away she bit her lip. 

“I know, that’s not…” She shut her eyes tight, Richie feeling the determination light up in him with each second she stayed like that, looking like she carried the weight of the entire town on her small, sad shoulders. After a beat, she exhaled again and a tiny, grateful smile bloomed on her face. “Thanks, Richie.”

He didn’t know it, but this is the last thing she would say to him for almost thirty years.

Bev, almost thirty years later, in almost the same spot, smiles. “You coughed so much I thought you were gonna die. Seriously, there was a moment where I was _sure_ you were a goner.”

Richie sighs. “And look at me now,” he says, taking a long drag and letting out the smoke with the poise and precision of an adult man who hasn’t gone without seeing the inside of a corner store every couple of days since he was a teenager.

She laughs, giving him a delicate round of applause, ash flying all over the place. “Truly fantastic, Tozier. I’m impressed.”

He takes the compliment without snarking anything back and catches her eye, the two of them sharing a short, sweet moment. After a beat, he speaks again. “Hey,” he starts, almost too loud, “that uh, that same night, you—you, uh, you said something about me in the deadlights. Do you remember that?” 

He tries to ask it lightly, nonchalant, but her face falls immediately, colour all but sapped from her cheeks before he even finishes his question. It’s an awful look, one much more dreadful than any he’s seen on her before, even in the countless cistern trips they’ve taken. He feels a shot of excitement immediately followed by a pang of guilt—this might be something, something new, but it’s probably going to come at the cost of her feeling like shit, and it’s going to be entirely his fault.

She looks at him and it’s not what he expects, that same silent terror that painted her features just moments ago. No, now, she just looks _sad._ She looks resigned, a guilty sigh escaping her lips, frown turning watery as she tilts her head apologetically. 

“I meant what I said, then,” she says, gaze intense. “I don’t—I don’t want you to have to go through with… what I think you might have to go through with. I mean, when _I…”_ she trails off, lost in thought. Richie’s arm twitches. “There’s still a chance. That we could change it, I mean. With you, and the loops. I mean, it felt—it did feel… _final,_ in a way, I think? After everything I saw? But Richie, it’s not—I know you say you’ve done it, but I saw those times, too, and it wasn’t like…” She brings her thumb up to her mouth and begins to chew on the nail, shiver ripping through her as a warm breeze floats through the air. 

Richie feels untethered, like he’s barely holding onto the plot here. He feels twitchy and uncomfortable, and like a wholly bad friend, sitting here making Bev go through this day after day after day. And maybe he _is_ a bad person, because he feels shitty but not shitty enough to stop. He _knows_ there’s something here. He knows there’s something she’s been holding back, all seventy two versions of her, for some fucking reason. And he knows that this is the closest he’s ever been to getting her to give it up.

Finally, he caves. “Bev,” he says, snapping her back into reality, “what is it exactly that you _saw?_ What is it that you think I have to do?”

It hangs in the air for a second and Richie wonders if he’s gone too far. He’s kind of breathing heavily, now, chest heaving like a maniac. Bev, on the other hand, looks like a marble statue, completely still with her jaw set hard. She looks at Richie and speaks very carefully. “It was mostly just flashes, but… I saw Stan, and I saw Eddie. And then, Richie, in the deadlights I saw _you._ ”

**Bev saw Richie, in the deadlights. What does this mean? What does he have to do?**

**>[She saw Richie die when she was in the deadlights, like she saw Stan and Eddie die. He has to sacrifice himself and save the others.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185582#workskin) **

**>[She saw Stan and Eddie, and _then_ she saw Richie, in the deadlights. He has to go in the deadlights so he can see what she saw.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185753#workskin) **


	23. back to the weeds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: suicide

The thing is, Richie’s died before. He’s died several times, in fact. And he knows that Bev knows this, because even if he hasn’t told her this time, she’s seen it. So it wouldn’t make sense for her to be getting this choked up about it, unless— 

He has to sacrifice himself. 

He can see it clearly now—it’s the only way. How could it not be? Whether the universe gave him a second chance to make things right or it’s just the clown playing another trick and torturing him, there’s only one possible outcome. Both scenarios are one and the same: to make it stop, he has to sacrifice himself to save the rest of his friends. It’s clear that there’s a price for putting It to and end, and that price is someone’s life. The balance of the universe and all that, right? It was even giving him hints when they were kids, telling them if they just let It take Bill and Bill alone, It would stop, point blank. The only thing that’s changed since then is that now Richie is the one It wants. And It must want him pretty fucking bad, if It’s given him seventy two chances to realize. 

It makes sense, now, why Bev’s been to hesitant to tell him too much about what she knows about the loops, day in and day out. It’s because she knows that he’s going to end up like Stan— _has_ to end up like Stan—for them to truly defeat It in any meaningful way. She’s probably still clinging to the hope that there’s some other way, some other iteration of it she’s seen that Richie hasn’t tried yet, something that could work without them losing another friend.

But if him dying for real means that Eddie gets to live? There’s not a single version of this day where Richie wouldn’t take that deal.

He thanks Bev for talking to him and says that he’s going to head inside to make some lunch. Then, he walks out the front door and heads straight for Neibolt. 

It’s not too far from the townhouse, and by this point, Richie has memorized the route, along with all the detours he could take. It was kind of just in his bones as a kid, muscle memory kicking in whenever he got on his bike and started pedaling. And that’s still there, his body remembering the things his mind forgot, but now along with that, Richie’s actually paying attention. He’s on his way to three months—though not that he’ll make it that long, if this works—and he’s been studying every inch of this godforsaken town. When he was a kid, it was just innate, making the turn here or there or crossing through that park simply because that was the way to get wherever he was going. He knew only landmarks—and he knew them well—but he didn’t know the names of streets other than the ones him and his friends lived on, and maybe a few of the bigger ones in the main parts of town. Now, he can put a name to every road within a three mile radius. 

He’s not sure if he should be worried about how little convincing it takes himself to climb down the well, nearly on autopilot. He doesn’t think he’s afraid of dying, really dying. There’s a part of him that knew, all the other times, that it wasn’t going to work. Where’s the sacrifice in getting stomped on by Paul Bunyan? What’s the point? This time, it feels different. It feels real. If he wasn’t so focused, it might even feel exhilarating. The feeling that his life or the decisions he makes have any sort of stake or meaning is something that Richie hasn’t felt in weeks. But now? It’s like every sloshing step he advances through the sewers is something monumental. He’s going to save his friends. He’s sure of it.

When he gets down to the cistern, it occurs to him that he’s going to die without telling Eddie he loves him. It almost sends him running straight back to the townhouse, hands shaking as he stands frozen in the middle of the cavern, mind racing. He knows for a fact that the thought that his feelings could be reciprocated doesn’t cross his mind unless Richie tells him. He knows for a fact that Eddie thinks love—not real love, but the love that he gets, the love that he deserves—is a pair of claws pinning him down. 

And Richie’s never going to get to show him otherwise. 

He turns to leave, fully prepared to drag his body back up through the bowels of the city when just one minute ago he was ready to let it rot below. He knows that he’s still going to do this, still _has_ to do this, but he can’t do it without making sure that Eddie knows just how loved he really is, and always has been. 

It’s really too bad that him and the universe aren’t on the same page, with this one. 

“Richie,” says a voice—a horrible, lilting voice, deranged and bubbling over with laughter. Richie turns to find the source, then turns back to find It standing at the entrance of the cistern, blocking the exit. It crosses it’s arms, pouting. “I thought we were going to _play,”_ It whines, sending a chill up Richie’s spine.

Well, too late now. _Sorry, Eds._ “Fuck off. Just take me back to the weeds or whatever the fuck your thing is. I’ll be your sacrifice.”

It laughs, a disgusting little sound. “Oh,” It teases, “my _sacrifice._ Isn’t that _nice.”_

A flash of red catches Richie’s eye in his peripherals, and when he looks back to It, there’s nothing there.

“If you want,” It hisses, right behind Richie’s ear, arm wrapped tightly around his neck. Richie cringes, a full body shudder, and tries not to throw up. “I can take your little Eds, too, and the two of you can float,” It pauses to devolve into a grotesque, excited little cackle. “together,” It eventually finishes, pressing itself forward against Richie’s back so it can crane it’s head around and flash him a twitchy grin full of rotting teeth. 

There’s a flash, just one second, of him and Eddie suspended in the air together, eyes whited out and skin ghostly grey. “No,” he says, “just me. You take me, and you don’t touch any of them, ever again.”

It’s smile grows wider, drool dripping onto Richie’s chest while It’s eyebrows lower, sinister. “You mean, today?” It punctuates the question with a chuckle. 

Richie blanches. “What?”

Suddenly the pressure on his neck is gone, and then a second later It appears across the cavern, in full-out spider form. It’s arms hang limply as it starts laughing again. “Oh, Richie,” It says, “should have looked a little closer, hm?” It smiles as Richie’s face scrunches up, confused. “All that time searching the sky, then all these todays just running around trying to figure it out.” It emphasizes the words seemingly at random, little bursts of creepy, shivering energy as it’s pitch jumps up and down. “But it was right under your nose all along, wasn’t it Richie?”

He takes a step forward. “I’m here, alright? Just—fucking hurry up and kill me, you bitch. Get it over with.” His voice nearly cracks at the end, exhaustion catching up with him as he tries desperately not to let it show. He just wants it to be _over._

It surges forward suddenly, legs bracing down as it’s upper body lowers, chin hovering close above the ground in front of Richie, swaying menacingly. “You’re not the one that’s supposed to die,” It says darkly, voice trembling. “Do you think _you_ get to choose? Do you think _you’re_ the one that sits upon the throne of the universe and-”

“Shut up, you stupid fucking _clown!”_ With that, one of It’s legs shoots out and clocks Richie in the side of the head, sending him flying, back cracking against the wall of the cavern as he slumps to the ground. 

_“I am the destroyer of worlds,”_ It growls, spit flying all over Richie’s face as It pins him back against the wall. It’s claws dig into him, puncturing his skin with a series of wet, sickening little pops. “I am the eater of man!”

If he wasn’t in so much pain, Richie would certainly be rolling his eyes right now. The getting all up in face is still gross, but the self-serving shit talk got old around day seventeen. His head hurts and the pieces start to fall in place, fuzzy and just out of reach. He blinks, hard, and It’s glowing yellow eyes start to pulsate, everything else in his field of vision fading away as he watches the lights dance around each other like stars. 

“I’ll see you next time, Richie,” It says, and with that, everything goes dark.

**Well, it seems like you might have missed something, last time. Why don't we heed the clown's advice and go back and pay a little extra attention to Bev and Richie's chat on the stairs?**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185549#workskin) **


	24. your real family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

As soon as he wakes up, he realizes what he has to do.

It doesn’t matter _why_ he’s here, or by what mechanism. All that matters is what he knows, and right now that’s pretty much nothing.

But, it doesn’t have to be. It’s not going to be.

This is what he has so far:

Bev’s seen it, seen it all. She knows what happens in each loop, before Richie even tells her. She doesn’t—didn’t—know that’s what it is, of course, but deep in her gut she _knows,_ everything every Richie has seen and has yet to see. 

And if Richie wants to see it, too, he has to go in the deadlights. 

And he has to go _alone._

It feels right and wrong at the same time. His entire life—well, minus that pesky twenty seven years in between, give or take—he had this deep, intrinsic understanding that he was supposed to be with the losers, and that they were supposed to be with him. Perhaps it’s fitting that it feels both right and wrong, seeing as the universe ripped them away from him anyway. He’s been back with them for almost three months, now, and despite absolutely everything, he’s never felt more sure of anything in his adult life—this is where he’s supposed to be, and _who_ he’s supposed to be. There’s an underlying feeling of ease that cuts through the panic and the confusion of every today, one that tells him he’s at least doing one thing right. 

It’s like he walked into that restaurant and remembered the people that made up every good part of him, and subsequently met himself for the first time since he was a kid. He thinks this person might be someone he could end up liking, if he has a tomorrow to try it out.

He’s trying to get to that tomorrow, to bring all his friends through with him. But to get there, it seems that first he has to leave them behind. He supposes it makes sense. He’s the only one stuck here, today, so to get out he has to go at it alone. As much as the phrase _lucky seven_ burns itself out over and over again in his chest, he knows that this is what he needs to do. This is his test. He’s not abandoning them, he’s doing it _for_ them.

When he was younger, Richie always wondered where he would end up—he liked to think he would be rich and drive a ferrari, spending his free time fucking Michelle Pfieffer or hanging out doing coke with Tony Montana or whatever other ridiculous Hollywood grunge fantasies his adolescent mind could cook up. He’d tell the others he was going to be a star, and that they’d all be welcome at his mansion whenever they wanted. He had this whole plan laid out—he’d get rich for being funny or annoying or whatever it was people told him he was good at, and he’d buy a massive house with tons of guest rooms in some cool city like LA or San Francisco where it never rained and was really clean and had lots of live music but also was close to nature, with forests and protected wildlife areas and all that other shit. _He_ didn’t really care about any of that, but he knew that those were things the losers wanted, items on a mental list he’d quietly built up whenever any of his friends talked about what they wanted their futures to look like. He thought that if he lived in this crazy cool city with this awesome house, then maybe the losers would want to stay near him, stay _with_ him, when they all grew up. And then, if things got bad again— _when_ things got bad again, they would be ready.

He never thought he would lose them. Maybe Richie used to be more of an idealist than he can remember, or maybe it’s just a classic case of childhood naivety. Whatever it is, he really, _really_ believed it. Sure, he knew that he realistically wouldn’t be famous or have a huge house where he and the losers could just be roommates forever, but he knew he’d always have them by his side, no matter what. They’re the reason he was never home that summer—hell, they _were_ his home. They were the people who got him, who really knew who he was, and they were the people who loved him not in spite of that but because of it. They were the people that _he_ loved.

And now, he has a chance to prove it—to get them out of this and give them the lives they’ve always deserved, together. 

He doesn’t have a lot of time. He knows that it’ll be another fifteen minutes until they send someone up to wake him, but that’s all he’s got. He moves without really thinking about it, mind blank but urgent at the same time as he rifles through the drawers of his room. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he knows that he’ll know what to do once he finds it.

A couple minutes later, he pulls a blank notebook and a pen out from the bottom drawer of the nightstand, and he knows that this is what he was looking for. 

(It’s a little bit funny: he’s made a career off of other people’s words, and yet he gravitates to this, again. Maybe his own thoughts have always been a bit too tangled to market to the masses—letters he never sent, letters carved into bridges. Perhaps it’s time to let some of his writing step into the light, just like him.) 

There’s an eruption of laughter from downstairs then, which means he has seven minutes left. He taps the pen on the dresser, willing the words to come to him. He has to write something that will let the losers know his plans, but not make them come running after him before he even makes it to Neibolt. He can’t give them too much, but he needs to make sure that they’ll be there to save him eventually, like they did with Bev when they were kids. If he’s too vague, they might not be able to figure it out in time.

He doesn’t want to think about what happens if that ends up being the case.

Another minute passes and he uncaps the pen, pressing the tip down into the paper.

**What kind of note should Richie write?**

**>[Be vague. Even if he reasons with them, he knows that they're going to do everything they can to protect him, even if it's against his wishes. If he tells them what's going on, they'll just try to stop him.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185876#workskin) **

**>[Be direct. He trusts them enough to let him do what he needs to do, then come save him once he's seen enough in the deadlights. If he doesn't tell them what's going on, they'll be rash and they might get hurt.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185930#workskin) **


	25. Richie Tozier's All-Dead Rock Show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings:none

She didn’t just see him in the deadlights. She saw  _ him, in the deadlights.  _

It’s glaringly obvious, now. She’s seen them all die, so it wouldn’t make sense for her to be so choked up about him specifically dying. He knows that now. She’s upset because  _ she’s  _ been through being in the deadlights herself, and she knows firsthand how singularly awful it is, so she doesn’t want Richie to have to go through it either. Hell, he already went through it for about twelve seconds, a couple of times near the start, and just that short amount of time was already enough for him.

A shiver runs through him at the memory of that cold, bright weightless feeling, then turns his attention back to Bev. She’s watching him, and he can feel that string between them pulling tight once again. It occurs to him that he’s been feeling it his whole life, even if he hasn’t always known what it was. A silent sort of tugging on his soul, gentle but determined in its own quiet way. He’d chalked it up to plain old longing, just a normal sort of dissatisfaction with his lonely life. 

They both know what he has to do. 

But, first:

“I started smoking because I missed you,” he admits, jumping back in the conversation. He watches the wheels turn in her head before a surprised little smile forms on her face, head tilting to the side. “Which, like,” he continues, “I know it’s probably not like a compliment to have someone start smoking because of you because of, like, addiction and all, but I’m saying this in the nicest way possible.”

Bev just lets out a little laugh, then raises her eyebrows like,  _ go on, please.  _

“After you left, we kind of… it wasn’t the same. I mean, you know how it was, with the seven of us. But yeah, anyway, I, uh—god, I got, like, fucking Greta to get them for me, before I could buy them myself.”

She gasps. “Greta  _ Keene?” _

“I know, I know,” Richie smiles, “but I think she had a thing for Bill so she promised she’d, like, hook me up if I put in a good word for her. I don’t think I ever mentioned it to him, actually.” He shakes his head, smirking to himself as Bev snorts. “The smell reminded me of you,” he explains, a little bit sheepishly, Bev sobering up with an endeared little frown. “Oh, shut up. You—I, uh. It made me feel closer to you, even if I was pissed off that you never called or wrote like you promised you would—which, obviously,” he holds up a dismissive hand, “not your fault, given the whole… forgetting thing. Anyway, uh—”

“And then you forgot who I was too and discovered you had this mysterious nicotine addiction?” She quirks an eyebrow, on the verge of a laugh. 

He rolls his eyes. “I mean, essentially, yeah. But it was like—I don’t know, I feel like a lot of people feel bad about it but I never did. It was always… comforting? to me?” He feels a wave of insecurity hit him, feeling weirdly vulnerable. This is the first conversation he’s had in a while that he hasn’t already had a hundred times, and it’s weird. 

But it’s nice, too. “And, oh, yeah, holy  _ shit,  _ I completely forgot about this but, like, okay. Whenever I was like in college or just out or whatever and I saw like, a girl with red hair that looked like—well, you, obviously, now—I would get the most  _ intense  _ urges to smoke. Like, I had to have a cigarette that instant or I’d die.” Bev leans her head back against the railing, smiling in a melancholy sort of way. “It’s weird, right?”

She nods, getting it. “Our bodies remembered even if we didn’t.” 

Later, in the cistern, Richie briefly wonders what will happen after he goes in the deadlights. The last time he did it—day five, he thinks—Eddie was there to launch a spear into It’s mouth. There’s no doubt that he’ll do it again, that all his friends will do everything they can to get him down, as fast as possible.

But he doesn’t want that. Not this time. He needs to go in the deadlights and stay there, let the light burn out his eyes so he can finally see. 

It goes, as most things have gone for Richie on this day, horribly.

He realizes pretty much instantly that his absolute lack of a plan is in no way going to cut it. After his talk with Bev at the townhouse, it was pretty much autopilot, getting the other losers together and heading down into Neibolt. Why would he do any different? Any good thing that’s come out of these loops have come out of them working together. As much of the lucky seven that can be together, together—that’s the way it’s always supposed to have been.

He realizes that this is something he’s going to have to face alone when It thrusts a claw through Bev’s torso, sickly yellow eyes watching Richie—who, two seconds ago, was moments from entering the deadlights—with a knowing smile. She drops to the ground in a heap, a thick dark red staining the entirety of her midsection. Richie scrambles over to her, ignoring It’s faux surprised gasp and laughter. He feels like he has that laughter playing on a loop in his head, taunting him over and over and over again as he fails, and fails, and fails.

_ Fuck the deadlights,  _ Richie thinks. He can do that on the next today.  _ If It’ll let me,  _ he thinks. He knows now that It knows his plan.

It knows a lot more than Richie thinks, and It watches on with delight as he trips on a loose rock, ankle twisting as he drops, head smashing into a boulder with a low  _ crunch.  _

The last thing that Richie hears is It’s voice, breathy and manic and on and endless loop, saying  _ try again, try again, try again…  _

Then, for the seventy second time, he fades into darkness. 

**What would you like to do?**

**>[I want to keep trying to figure out the deadlights.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185693#workskin) **

**>[I'm tired, let me take a break, please.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185498#workskin) **


	26. starships were meant to fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

_Dear Losers,_

_I’m sorry for leaving without telling any of you, but it’s for the best. I promise that I’m going to fix this for all of us and make sure everyone gets to make it to tomorrow, if it ever comes. I don’t know why It chose me, but It did and I think that means I have to pass this test alone, whatever that means._

_I love you guys. See you tomorrow, I hope._

_Richie._

It’s definitely a gamble, but he has to trust that they’ll figure it out. And if they don’t, he can just try again, right? Try again, try again, try again. Those words are never not lingering in the back of his mind, a constant litany to the tune of disjointed, rasping laughs. Whether or not he makes it tomorrow, he knows that _that’s_ something he’ll never forget again. 

He leaves his phone and takes his keys, then slips out the door to his bedroom and makes his way down the fire escape as quietly as he can. He doesn’t look back as he peels out of the parking lot.

He doesn’t really pay attention to the road, head spinning with anxious thoughts—is it going to work? Is he going to see what Bev saw? Will they make it to him in time?—but he ends up at Neibolt anyway, muscle memory long since taking the route and programming it into every single fibre of his being. The trip down into the cistern is the same, and seemingly mere minutes after he penned his note, Richie finds himself standing in the mouth of the cavern and listening for the telltale scuttling of spider legs on rock. 

“I’m here, you ugly piece of shit! Come get me!” There’s no response to that, so Richie walks further into the cistern, putting himself out in the open, holding his arms wide. “You want me to float? Today’s your lucky day, motherfucker.”

Echoing from deeper inside, there’s a deep, twisted laugh. “Maybe it’s _my_ lucky day, but it sure isn’t yours, Richie,” It says, finally appearing in front of him, a little ways away but still close enough for Richie to see the self-satisfied smirk on It’s face, drool gathering on it’s lip. 

And, well, It’s not wrong. 

“You wanna float?”

“Yeah, I do.” 

It bristles at that, shaking with excitement. “Mmmmm,” it hums, pitch swimming, “you didn’t let your _losers_ come with you to _ruin your plans.”_ It pouts as it says the last few words, like It’s mocking him. It sends a chill through Richie’s spine—he has no way of knowing how much It knows. Is mind reading outside the specific realm of crazy Richie’s concerned with, here? 

“Oh, you think you’re so clever,” It teases, lazy eye drifting elsewhere while It’s other one glares at him menacingly. “You think _you_ can save them? You think you’re anything without your lucky sev—oh, that’s right. I guess the Trashmouth isn’t the _weakest_ link after all.”

“Fuck you,” Richie spits, taking a step forward. It takes everything in him not to jump It right then and there, fingers twitching to leap out and pry open it’s mouth and rip the deadlights from it’s throat with his bare hands. “You want a weak link to pull on so they fall apart? I’m right—”

The air is suddenly punched from Richie’s lungs and he hears a faraway, underwater gasp that he only realizes is his own when he feels his feet leave the ground, head cold and congested. The lights dance their awful little waltz and his vision floods with light framed by the outline of rows and rows of razor sharp teeth, welcoming him into their embrace with that mesmerizing cold, floating through his veins. 

He can feel a stream of blood crawling up his face, making its way from his nose into the air, suspended in a slow, slow climb against gravity. The cistern starts to fade away, leaving Richie only with burning white light and a thick, solid coldness to wade through.

**Congratulations! Richie has successfully entered the deadlights. Let's hope his friends get there in time to save him. Now, what would you like to see?**

**>[Something from the future.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185891#workskin)**

**>[Something from the past.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185909#workskin)**


	27. hands up and touch the sky (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: minor internalized homophobia

It’s later on in the summer and Richie is kneeling in the dirt.

He’s been here before, one time, at thirteen with a shitty pocket knife he stole from the drawer in the kitchen. There’s not a lot he remembers about first carving the letters into the bridge, but he remembers the feeling, desperate and afraid. He never went back to it after that, afraid of the way it made his heart jump into his throat, threatening to ooze out his mouth and ruin everything by saying it out loud. He’d been  _ by  _ it, sure, on his bike with his friends whenever they needed to use the bridge—but he’d never been able to bring himself to go back to the actual spot and confront the enormity of what he’d done. 

Now, years later, is the first time since then that he’s actually looking at it, running his fingers over the hollow in the wood like it’s a headstone. Weather has worn the fence out over the years, wood warped and dull like an old memory. Most of the carvings are sort of faded, waiting to be claimed back by the wood as it’s worn down—the  _ R + E  _ sitting there in front of him is no exception, softer than it was when the letters were first carved into the wood. If only the feelings had gotten softer, too, this might be easier.

Then again. It wasn’t easy then, so why would it be easy now?

When he’d first done it, it felt like he was possessed. A part of him thought, foolishly, that maybe by writing it down he’d be able to purge whatever sickness had instilled itself within him and move on with his life. But even then he knew that that wasn’t how things like that worked, and what was really moving him to do this—that word, the one he was too afraid to think and all too ready to say. It had crept into every fibre of his being long, long ago, and it was that that had pushed his legs on the pedals of his bike until he found himself at the bridge, knife in hand. It was the thing he hated and so desperately wanted at the same time, the thing that made him feel like he was going insane. Now, he just feels  _ sad.  _ It feels like some kind of bookend, a full circle he didn’t even know he was starting then and doesn’t want to complete now. 

The breeze is cool, comfortably so. He doesn’t think something so nice should exist in a world where people are allowed to live for seventy three todays but not for any of the tomorrows.

He pulls out a knife not unlike the one he used all those years ago, and gets to work on chipping away at the rot and debris once more. It’s tedious. His legs hurt, crouching there with his forty year old body. When he’s finished he stands up with great effort, admiring his work.

Like the first time, he doesn’t feel better.

Like the first time, it doesn’t stop.

His rental car waits for him. There isn’t anything else.

**It is cold and empty, and time is running out.**

**>[What’s next?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185999#workskin)**


	28. hands up and touch the sky (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: discussion of sonia kaspbrak's a+parenting

It’s June, 1993, one week after high school graduation. Bev is gone, Ben is gone, Stan is gone.

Eddie is next.

They’ve gone through the typical promises and assurances: _yes I’ll write, yes I’ll call, yes I’ll try to come back for Christmas or Thanksgiving or maybe even Easter if I can convince my mom, yes I won’t ever forget you or your terrible voices._

It feels a lot more desperate, a lot more empty, than the first three times they went through it. Bev never wrote. Ben never called. Stan never came back to visit. They all forgot, so it seems, and the thought of Eddie forgetting, too, has been a rancid, roiling pit living in the bottom of Richie’s stomach for the past year, since Stan and his family packed up and left Derry. He’s allowed himself to think, fleetingly, that maybe there’s something else going on, that his friends didn’t just decide they never actually liked him, like he feared all along. If that were the case, they wouldn’t have any reason not to still talk to Eddie, or Bill, or Mike. 

Eddie’s uncle is putting the last of the Kaspbrak’s things into his van, overloaded with the random knick knacks and crap his mom had collected over the years and never had the heart to get rid of. Richie’s never seen her without being surrounded by her _things,_ useless in function but firmly deemed as necessities, vital. This is one of many patterns that will continue to repeat itself for the years to come. 

Eddie’s going to college in some random town sort of near Pittsburgh, because that’s where Sonia wanted to move, god knows why. 

“It’s only a seven hour drive from Chicago,” Eddie says, skin under his eyes dark and sunken in, staring at the asphalt underneath their sneakers. They’re sitting a few feet apart _—safe,_ Richie thinks—on the edge of the sidewalk outside his house. “I could drive up and see you on all the long weekends.”

Richie sniffs loudly, dressing it up as a half-hearted laugh at the last second. “Yeah? With what car? You think Mrs. K’s gonna let you take hers? Or even drive, for that matter?”

“I could—” Eddie starts with a fire that almost immediately snuffs itself out, shoulders slouching into a curve, one Richie’s pretty sure he’s spent years alone staring at. “Never mind, it’s stupid.”

“Tell me.”

“No, it’s—”

_“Eds.”_

“Ugh, fine,” he spits, rolling his eyes despite the smile on his face, already ready to launch into it again with just one tiny nudge. “I looked it up and you only have to be twenty one to rent a car in Pennsylvania. I could borrow a friend’s ID or something.”

Richie’s eyebrows shoot up. He expects Eddie to go into a tangent about how it’s a nice idea but car insurance is crazy and how if he gets into an accident or damages the car he’s _done,_ but Eddie doesn’t say anything else, just shrugs kind of noncommittal and mutters something like, “I said it was stupid.”

Richie’s noticed, as he often does with things concerning Eddie—the kid has gotten _sneaky._ More and more he’s saying things that surprise Richie, little ideas or schemes or quiet rebellions against the illness his mother instilled in him, the one he _actually_ needed some kind of help for. Richie doesn’t know if there’s a pill for whatever she’s done to him, maybe just love and choices made freely is what he needs to get past it. He likes when Eddie gets like this. It feels like a step in the right direction, even if he doesn’t act on his ideas (which he rarely, rarely does) they still come to him, and that’s something. 

“It’s not stupid,” Richie says, softer than he was intending, drawing a panicked look out of Eddie, head whipping up and eyes locking onto his. He looks at Eddie’s hand, braced on the edge of the sidewalk at the halfway point between them. It would be so easy to just reach out and take it to hold in his. Eddie’s body would even block it out from where Sonia was standing at the porch, glancing over to the two of them every few seconds with her arms crossed.

He doesn’t move. They sit in silence for another minute or two before Eddie lets out a loud, wet sniffle and wipes at his eyes angrily. 

“Eddie?” He doesn’t respond, just starts to shake a little bit, and Richie finds himself caught between wanting to throw himself on him and wanting to throw himself into the gutter down at the end of the road. “You alright there, old chap?”

Eddie doesn’t even react to his British Guy voice, which is how he knows this is bad. “I don’t want to forget you,” he admits, looking over at Richie with tears streaming down his face, split wide open. “I wish we—”

“Me too,” Richie says, not knowing what he’s agreeing to but knowing that he does, anyway. He tries to say something comforting like _you won’t forget_ or _I won’t let you_ but all that comes out is a punch of a syllable, breathy and cut short.

“I—”

“What?” It’s pleading, and he’s searching Richie with the same eyes he uses to inspect silverware—probing and intense and altogether much too close. 

The words are where they always are: sitting underneath his tongue; plastering itself to his gums; boring a hole in his throat; riding on his breath, sour and afraid. _I like you._ The other words are locked deep inside, low in the pit of his stomach where he felt shame and everything else that ever scared him so much he wanted to tear himself apart until there was nothing left but someone normal and good and right. _I like you_ is easier, more malleable, ready to be spun into a joke or a friendly, passing comment at a moment’s notice. _Those_ words—he wants to say them, he really does. He wants to say them every second of every day, vicious little letters digging into the chapped skin of his lips _(Richie, they’re going to bleed if you don’t start using the lip balm I got you, please, it’s winter, if they crack then they’ll get infected and you’ll die)_ and launching themselves into the open air, a suicide mission on every breath. They’re the only words that Richie ever wants to say, so he has to say everything else just to make sure he doesn’t say _that._

This time—astonishingly, miraculously, dreadfully—he says nothing.

He doesn’t know this now, but it’s already too late. 

“Eddie bear?” 

“Coming, mommy!” It’s an immediate response, one that Richie would think sounded ridiculous coming out of absolutely any other eighteen year old. There are some victories that are big: not taking your pills or wearing your fanny pack anymore, and taking driver’s ed lessons. Other victories are smaller: taking ten minutes to say goodbye to your best friend instead of helping cram garbage into a van, and being able to say the words on your script without having to mean them.

He turns back to face Richie with a fresh wave of panic, that breath halting feeling that comes only when it’s really and fully time to go. It seizes Richie, too, and all they can do is just stare at each other, neither of them wanting to start the process and speak first, like if they just stay still and silent then they can freeze time and set up camp in this moment, taking as long as they need.

Richie knows that no amount of time would be long enough, and when Sonia calls out again, impatient, Eddie rises to stand on shaky legs, lip trembling in time. _Strap some maracas on that boy and I’ll play the guitar. We can sing a harmony and we’ll go on tour instead of going to college and we’ll never have to say goodbye._

Richie stands, too, a disjointed mirror to Eddie’s slow rise. His breathing begins to shallow, chest rising and falling in frantic little bursts, head going fuzzy. And then there’s a second where everything is suspended in slow motion—Eddie frozen mid-sob in the foreground and the van with nothing left to pack into it in the background, the world’s worst tableau with Richie watching from the audience, absolutely helpless—before it comes crashing back into them and the breath is ripped out of Eddie and the trunk of the van is slammed shut and Richie is throwing his arms around the boy that he loves, craning his neck to bury his face into his shoulder, both of them shaking. 

There are fragments of words, none of them comprehensible but understood anyway. Both of them are full on weeping without inhibition, clutching to each other in a way they haven’t done since the sewers. Somehow, this is scarier. 

“Eddie,” Richie says, desperate and hiccuping as they pull away, “I—” 

_I like you._

_I think about holding your hand all the time._

_I want to kiss you._

_I don’t think I’ll ever feel this way about anyone else._

_I’m in love with you._

“Richie, I—I have to go.”

“I’ll miss you,” he says.

“I’ll miss you too, Richie.” 

An hour later, Eddie Kaspbrak tries and fails to remember what had him so worked up, trails of tears drying salty on his cheeks. He spends a couple minutes searching for what could have possibly made him so _sad,_ but comes up with nothing. Besides, what’s there to be sad about? He’s going to college, and he gets to do it with his mom at his side, helping him every step of the way. 

Meanwhile, Richie Tozier sits on the edge of the sidewalk and weeps for a boy that, in two months, he will forget.

**It is cold and empty, and time is running out.**

**>[What’s next?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185999#workskin)**


	29. starry eyes (reprise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

_ Dear Losers, _

_ I know for a fact that you guys are going to think this is crazy, but hear me out. I’m stuck in a time loop. Today is the seventy third time I’ve lived this day. I think—god, I don’t even know for sure anymore. I’ve seen all of you die countless times. I’ve died countless times. Even if we beat It (which we have) I still wake up today.  _

_ You guys usually don’t believe me right off the bat, so here are some things to convince you guys I’m telling the truth: Mike, I’m sorry, but the ritual doesn’t work, even if we all believe it will, It knows that. But we don’t need it, we just have to make it small (All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit). Bill, you’re not actually happy with your wife and you guys should split up. Also, it’s not your fault that Georgie is gone. Ben, I love you, but please write another poem. I’m tired of those same three lines over and over again. And, Bev—you saw us as adults in the deadlights. You didn’t know it then, but you were really seeing the time loops that I’m stuck in. And you saw me, in the deadlights, which brings me to the reason of this whole thing. _

_ I have to let It trap me in the deadlights and float, just like Bev did the first time. It’s the only way I can see what she sees and start to figure out how to get out of this thing. I’m going to Neibolt, down in the cistern, and I’m going to confront It alone. You guys have to let me try, then come get me later. Just a couple of hours, like the first time. I need you guys to trust me, please. The five of you (and Stan—he was here, actually, for one of the loops) are my family and I love you. Hopefully, I’ll see you soon. If not, then I guess I’ll just wake up today and try again.  _

_ This next part is just for Eddie. _

_ Hey, Eds. I know you’re probably grumbling about not getting your own little thing up there—that’s because I have a bit more to say to you. Also I know you’re grumpy this morning because you’re thinking about your mom, and Myra. It’s not your fault. You didn’t deserve any of that. I wish I could have been there for you, after Derry. I would have told you I was in love with you and we would have gotten to give it a real try, a house and a dog and kids and everything. I know that’s what you wanted because you’ve told me, about twenty different times now. I wanted it, too. And I still do. I hope that someday we can have our gross little pomeranian you want so badly (It used that against you, a couple times) and the rest of the life we deserve together.  _

_ Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, and sorry it was like this. I’ve spent two months stuck in today, thinking about all the things I would have done if I got all these chances back then. But we can’t go back, and right now, I can’t go forward. Please make sure the others don’t rush to Neibolt too soon. I know they’ll want to. I need to do this. I need to make sure you live. It’s not worth it if you’re not there with me.  _

_ I love you guys. Thank you for making this thing bearable. There’s no way I would have been able to make it this far without you being there. Not that I really had a choice, but still. Be safe. See you soon and see you tomorrow, hopefully. _

_ Richie. _

It’s definitely a gamble, but he has to trust that they’ll let him do what he needs to do. And if they don’t, he can just try again, right? Try again, try again, try again. Those words are never not lingering in the back of his mind, a constant litany to the tune of disjointed, rasping laughs. Whether or not he makes it tomorrow, he knows that  _ that’s  _ something he’ll never forget again. 

He leaves his phone and takes his keys, then slips out the door to his bedroom and makes his way down the fire escape as quietly as he can. He doesn’t look back as he peels out of the parking lot.

He doesn’t really pay attention to the road, head spinning with anxious thoughts—is it going to work? Is he going to see what Bev saw? Will they make it to him in time?—but he ends up at Neibolt anyway, muscle memory long since taking the route and programming it into every single fibre of his being. The trip down into the cistern is the same, and seemingly mere minutes after he penned his note, Richie finds himself standing in the mouth of the cavern and listening for the telltale scuttling of spider legs on rock. 

“I’m here, you ugly piece of shit! Come get me!” There’s no response to that, so Richie walks further into the cistern, putting himself out in the open, holding his arms wide. “You want me to float? Today’s your lucky day, motherfucker.”

Echoing from deeper inside, there’s a deep, twisted laugh. “Maybe it’s  _ my  _ lucky day, but it sure isn’t yours, Richie,” It says, finally appearing in front of him, a little ways away but still close enough for Richie to see the self-satisfied smirk on It’s face, drool gathering on it’s lip. 

And, well, It’s not wrong. 

“You wanna float?”

“Yeah, I do.” 

It bristles at that, shaking with excitement. “Mmmmm,” it hums, pitch swimming, “you didn’t let your  _ losers  _ come with you to  _ ruin your plans.”  _ It pouts as it says the last few words, like It’s mocking him. It sends a chill through Richie’s spine—he has no way of knowing how much It knows. Is mind reading outside the specific realm of crazy Richie’s concerned with, here? 

“Oh, you think you’re so clever,” It teases, lazy eye drifting elsewhere while It’s other one glares at him menacingly. “You think  _ you  _ can save them? You think you’re anything without your lucky sev—oh, that’s right. I guess the Trashmouth isn’t the  _ weakest  _ link after all.”

“Fuck you,” Richie spits, taking a step forward. It takes everything in him not to jump It right then and there, fingers twitching to leap out and pry open It’s mouth and rip the deadlights from It’s throat with his bare hands. “You want a weak link to pull on so they fall apart? I’m right—”

The air is suddenly punched from Richie’s lungs and he hears a faraway, underwater gasp that he only realizes is his own when he feels his feet leave the ground, head cold and congested. The lights dance their awful little waltz and his vision floods with light framed by the outline of rows and rows of razor sharp teeth, welcoming him into their embrace with that mesmerizing cold, floating through his veins. 

He can feel a stream of blood crawling up his face, making its way from his nose into the air, suspended in a slow, slow climb against gravity. The cistern starts to fade away, leaving Richie only with burning white light and a thick, solid coldness to wade through. 

**Congratulations! Richie has successfully entered the deadlights. Let’s hope his friends get there in time to save him. Now, what would you like to see?**

**>[Something from the future.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185966#workskin)**

**>[Something from the past.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185948#workskin)**


	30. sidewalk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: discussion of sonia kaspbrak'd a+ parenting

It’s June, 1993, one week after high school graduation. Bev is gone, Ben is gone, Stan is gone.

Eddie is next.

They’ve gone through the typical promises and assurances: _yes I’ll write, yes I’ll call, yes I’ll try to come back for Christmas or Thanksgiving or maybe even Easter if I can convince my mom, yes I won’t ever forget you or your terrible voices._

It feels a lot more desperate, a lot more empty, than the first three times they went through it. Bev never wrote. Ben never called. Stan never came back to visit. They all forgot, so it seems, and the thought of Eddie forgetting, too, has been a rancid, roiling pit living in the bottom of Richie’s stomach for the past year, since Stan and his family packed up and left Derry. He’s allowed himself to think, fleetingly, that maybe there’s something else going on, that his friends didn’t just decide they never actually liked him, like he feared all along. If that were the case, they wouldn’t have any reason not to still talk to Eddie, or Bill, or Mike. 

Eddie’s uncle is putting the last of the Kaspbrak’s things into his van, overloaded with the random knick knacks and crap his mom had collected over the years and never had the heart to get rid of. Richie’s never seen her without being surrounded by her _things,_ useless in function but firmly deemed as necessities, vital. This is one of many patterns that will continue to repeat itself for the years to come. 

Eddie’s going to college in some random town sort of near Pittsburgh, because that’s where Sonia wanted to move, god knows why. 

“It’s only a seven hour drive from Chicago,” Eddie says, skin under his eyes dark and sunken in, staring at the asphalt underneath their sneakers. They’re sitting a few feet apart _—safe,_ Richie thinks—on the edge of the sidewalk outside his house. “I could drive up and see you on all the long weekends.”

Richie sniffs loudly, dressing it up as a half-hearted laugh at the last second. “Yeah? With what car? You think Mrs. K’s gonna let you take hers? Or even drive, for that matter?”

“I could—” Eddie starts with a fire that almost immediately snuffs itself out, shoulders slouching into a curve, one Richie’s pretty sure he’s spent years alone staring at. “Never mind, it’s stupid.”

“Tell me.”

“No, it’s—”

_“Eds.”_

“Ugh, fine,” he spits, rolling his eyes despite the smile on his face, already ready to launch into it again with just one tiny nudge. “I looked it up and you only have to be twenty one to rent a car in Pennsylvania. I could borrow a friend’s ID or something.”

Richie’s eyebrows shoot up. He expects Eddie to go into a tangent about how it’s a nice idea but car insurance is crazy and how if he gets into an accident or damages the car he’s _done,_ but Eddie doesn’t say anything else, just shrugs kind of noncommittal and mutters something like, “I said it was stupid.”

Richie’s noticed, as he often does with things concerning Eddie—the kid has gotten _sneaky._ More and more he’s saying things that surprise Richie, little ideas or schemes or quiet rebellions against the illness his mother instilled in him, the one he _actually_ needed some kind of help for. Richie doesn’t know if there’s a pill for whatever she’s done to him, maybe just love and choices made freely is what he needs to get past it. He likes when Eddie gets like this. It feels like a step in the right direction, even if he doesn’t act on his ideas (which he rarely, rarely does) they still come to him, and that’s something. 

“It’s not stupid,” Richie says, softer than he was intending, drawing a panicked look out of Eddie, head whipping up and eyes locking onto his. He looks at Eddie’s hand, braced on the edge of the sidewalk at the halfway point between them. It would be so easy to just reach out and take it to hold in his. Eddie’s body would even block it out from where Sonia was standing at the porch, glancing over to the two of them every few seconds with her arms crossed.

He doesn’t move. They sit in silence for another minute or two before Eddie lets out a loud, wet sniffle and wipes at his eyes angrily. 

“Eddie?” He doesn’t respond, just starts to shake a little bit, and Richie finds himself caught between wanting to throw himself on him and wanting to throw himself into the gutter down at the end of the road. “You alright there, old chap?”

Eddie doesn’t even react to his British Guy voice, which is how he knows this is bad. “I don’t want to forget you,” he admits, looking over at Richie with tears streaming down his face, split wide open. “I wish we—”

“Me too,” Richie says, not knowing what he’s agreeing to but knowing that he does, anyway. He tries to say something comforting like _you won’t forget_ or _I won’t let you_ but all that comes out is a punch of a syllable, breathy and cut short.

“I—”

“What?” It’s pleading, and he’s searching Richie with the same eyes he uses to inspect silverware—probing and intense and altogether much too close. 

The words are where they always are: sitting underneath his tongue; plastering itself to his gums; boring a hole in his throat; riding on his breath, sour and afraid. _I like you._ The other words are locked deep inside, low in the pit of his stomach where he felt shame and everything else that ever scared him so much he wanted to tear himself apart until there was nothing left but someone normal and good and right. _I like you_ is easier, more malleable, ready to be spun into a joke or a friendly, passing comment at a moment’s notice. _Those_ words—he wants to say them, he really does. He wants to say them every second of every day, vicious little letters digging into the chapped skin of his lips _(Richie, they’re going to bleed if you don’t start using the lip balm I got you, please, it’s winter, if they crack then they’ll get infected and you’ll die)_ and launching themselves into the open air, a suicide mission on every breath. They’re the only words that Richie ever wants to say, so he has to say everything else just to make sure he doesn’t say _that._

This time—astonishingly, miraculously, dreadfully—he says nothing.

He doesn’t know this now, but it’s already too late. 

“Eddie bear?” 

“Coming, mommy!” It’s an immediate response, one that Richie would think sounded ridiculous coming out of absolutely any other eighteen year old. There are some victories that are big: not taking your pills or wearing your fanny pack anymore, and taking driver’s ed lessons. Other victories are smaller: taking ten minutes to say goodbye to your best friend instead of helping cram garbage into a van, and being able to say the words on your script without having to mean them.

He turns back to face Richie with a fresh wave of panic, that breath halting feeling that comes only when it’s really and fully time to go. It seizes Richie, too, and all they can do is just stare at each other, neither of them wanting to start the process and speak first, like if they just stay still and silent then they can freeze time and set up camp in this moment, taking as long as they need.

Richie knows that no amount of time would be long enough, and when Sonia calls out again, impatient, Eddie rises to stand on shaky legs, lip trembling in time. _Strap some maracas on that boy and I’ll play the guitar. We can sing a harmony and we’ll go on tour instead of going to college and we’ll never have to say goodbye._

Richie stands, too, a disjointed mirror to Eddie’s slow rise. His breathing begins to shallow, chest rising and falling in frantic little bursts, head going fuzzy. And then there’s a second where everything is suspended in slow motion—Eddie frozen mid-sob in the foreground and the van with nothing left to pack into it in the background, the world’s worst tableau with Richie watching from the audience, absolutely helpless—before it comes crashing back into them and the breath is ripped out of Eddie and the trunk of the van is slammed shut and Richie is throwing his arms around the boy that he loves,craning his neck to bury his face into his shoulder, both of them shaking. 

There are fragments of words, none of them comprehensible but understood anyway. Both of them are full on weeping without inhibition, clutching to each other in a way they haven’t done since the sewers. Somehow, this is scarier. 

“Eddie,” Richie says, desperate and hiccuping as they pull away, “I—” 

_I like you._

_I think about holding your hand all the time._

_I want to kiss you._

_I don’t think I’ll ever feel this way about anyone else._

_I’m in love with you._

“Richie, I—I have to go.”

“I’ll miss you,” he says.

“I’ll miss you too, Richie.” 

An hour later, Eddie Kaspbrak tries and fails to remember what had him so worked up, trails of tears drying salty on his cheeks. He spends a couple minutes searching for what could have possibly made him so _sad,_ but comes up with nothing. Besides, what’s there to be sad about? He’s going to college, and he gets to do it with his mom at his side, helping him every step of the way. 

Meanwhile, Richie Tozier sits on the edge of the sidewalk and weeps for a boy that, in two months, he will forget.

**It is cold and empty, and it’s time.**

**>[What’s next?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186023#workskin)**


	31. west montrose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: minor internalized homophobia

It’s later on in the summer and Richie is kneeling in the dirt.

He’s been here before, one time, at thirteen with a shitty pocket knife he stole from the drawer in the kitchen. There’s not a lot he remembers about first carving the letters into the bridge, but he remembers the feeling, desperate and afraid. He never went back to it after that, afraid of the way it made his heart jump into his throat, threatening to ooze out his mouth and ruin everything by saying it out loud. He’d been  _ by  _ it, sure, on his bike with his friends whenever they needed to use the bridge—but he’d never been able to bring himself to go back to the actual spot and confront the enormity of what he’d done. 

Now, years later, is the first time since then that he’s actually looking at it, running his fingers over the hollow in the wood like it’s a headstone. Weather has worn the fence out over the years, wood warped and dull like an old memory. Most of the carvings are sort of faded, waiting to be claimed back by the wood as it’s worn down—the  _ R + E  _ sitting there in front of him is no exception, softer than it was when the letters were first carved into the wood. If only the feelings had gotten softer, too, this might be easier.

Then again. It wasn’t easy then, so why would it be easy now?

When he’d first done it, it felt like he was possessed. A part of him thought, foolishly, that maybe by writing it down he’d be able to purge whatever sickness had instilled itself within him and move on with his life. But even then he knew that that wasn’t how things like that worked, and what was really moving him to do this—that word, the one he was too afraid to think and all too ready to say. It had crept into every fibre of his being long, long ago, and it was that that had pushed his legs on the pedals of his bike until he found himself at the bridge, knife in hand. It was the thing he hated and so desperately wanted at the same time, the thing that made him feel like he was going insane. Now, he just feels  _ sad.  _ It feels like some kind of bookend, a full circle he didn’t even know he was starting then and doesn’t want to complete now. 

The breeze is cool, comfortably so. He doesn’t think something so nice should exist in a world where people are allowed to live for seventy three todays but not for any of the tomorrows.

He pulls out a knife not unlike the one he used all those years ago, and gets to work on chipping away at the rot and debris once more. It’s tedious. His legs hurt, crouching there with his forty year old body. When he’s finished he stands up with great effort, admiring his work.

Like the first time, he doesn’t feel better.

Like the first time, it doesn’t stop.

His rental car waits for him. There isn’t anything else.

**It is cold and empty, and it’s time.**

**>[What’s next?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186023#workskin)**


	32. can't stop 'cause we're so high

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

Richie comes out of the body of his other self with a cold snap that reverberates through him, something he just knows rather than feels, only a ghost of a sensation on the skin he can no longer feel. He already feels so far away from the odd, nostalgic warmth of Derry, a switch flipped as he’s thrust back into the unreality of the deadlights. None of this is helpful—he was supposed to see what Bev saw: flashes of a hundred different paths, himself stuck in a time loop and making the wrong decisions over and over again. That was… not that. 

He soon realizes that there’s no sense of physicality tied to any of his thoughts, completely severed from his body. Briefly, he wonders _—is_ _this what’s supposed to happen?_ There’s no way of knowing how long he’s been up here, and even if there was, he’s sure It could shrink or stretch it to feel different, anyway. Are his friends on there way? Are they going to bring him back into his body and into the world?

He is completely unmoored, consciousness floating through the ether like a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. If he could _feel,_ he thinks it would feel wrong, maybe like a tightness in his throat. But he can’t, so he just feels nothing, utterly deprived of anything but his own thoughts. Maybe _that’s_ his true fear—he never liked being alone. It would be a fitting punishment, one perhaps just a bit crueler than having to go through the same day over and over again. He’d take that over this in a heartbeat, if he still had one. At least in that he’d have his friends, and he’d have the option to try. But here? He has nothing, _is_ nothing. And as far as he knows, he’s going to continue to exist in this limbo until his friends come drag him out. But the thing about that, the small fact that Richie knows but doesn’t:

They’re not coming. At least, not in time.

This morning, he wrote a note. It wasn’t the note he wanted write. It wasn’t the note he should have written. ‘Cause you see, this is his test and his test alone. But he’s missed the entire point of the thing itself—this nightmare was born of the need to save Eddie, save all of them. How could he possibly change anything without involving the very people he’s meant to be doing this for? If he’s learned anything from the past seventy three days of his life, it’s that no action exists in a vacuum. Everything changes everything. He can’t change the day without changing himself, and he can’t save them without letting them save him. 

His train of thought begins to decay and he starts to feel himself flickering in and out of existence, the deadlights finishing their work and discarding him with the rest of It’s children, spiral of death and vacancy waiting eagerly for another body to add to its masses. There is one more thought, on the brink of extinguishing:

This was not the right choice.

**Well?**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186047#workskin) **


	33. BONK!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

Richie is yanked back into his body, sharp and sudden as a pair of hands curl around his ankles. The sensation spreads up his legs and he slowly becomes aware of his own skin, feeling foreign and too tight for just a moment. He can feel himself being pulled downwards, through the blinding white into slightly warmer depths. It’s sort of like when you’re swimming, and you’re wrestling underwater and your friend drags you through a warm patch of water that you really hope isn’t pee, despite the fact that it’s definitely pee. 

He’s not sure what possessed him to think about that, now, and yet he finds himself flashing through splashes of water on hot summer days, the quarry framed by a massive outcrop of rock. But it doesn’t last long, Richie yet again being ripped back into the present—maybe, he has now way of knowing where or when he is, if he  _ is  _ at all—as that thick white fills his vision again, but only for a second. Then everything suddenly flips to black. A dull, muted pain bores into his jaw and twin pressure points skirt the edges of his cheekbones, holding him in place as something soft presses to his lips. 

A couple of seconds later, he opens his eyes to see Eddie, eyes narrowed and searching as he stares into Richie’s newly grounded soul, hands not moving from his face. And, behind him: the cistern, and the rest of his friends.

“We got your note,” Eddie says, out of breath. 

His voice feels shredded. “Yeah, you did.” He glances over at the rest of them and smiles brightly, feeling a surge of pride run through him. Then he turns back to Eddie and softens. “Did you read your part?”

“I did.”

“And—”

“I want to name it Phil.”

“You—what?”

“The dog, I want to name it—”

“Guys?” Bev cuts in, “maybe another time? This is great, but we kind of have some stuff to deal with right now.” She gestures widely behind her to where Bill and Mike are clumsily dodging attacks, tripping over each other as they do so. Richie sighs and takes one of Eddie’s hands from his face and holds it tenderly in his.  _ One more time. _

“We have to make It small,” he calls out, already bored. The unnerving, out of body sort of terror is already fading, monotony flooding back into Richie’s bones and he takes a moment to close his eyes, opting not to look at his friends and their confused faces. It’s past comical at this point. It’s beating not just a dead horse but a skeleton, just like him and his fucking masturbators anonymous bit. 

But then Eddie squeezes his hand, and he remembers that he’s never going to have to tell that joke or look at this one, ever again.

“Hey motherfucker, we’re not scared of you!” he yells, getting It’s attention almost immediately. He strides over to the edge of the large slab of rock they’re on—a ledge above the main pit of the cistern—leading Eddie weakly behind him and getting right up in It’s spidery business. “You’re just a stupid fucking clown!”

“Yeah, and you’re ugly! Ugly piece of shit!” Eddie adds, laughing in a somewhat hysterical fashion. 

It trembles, shivering violently and shrinking considerably. “No,” It says, voice wavering as it scrambles backwards. The rest of the losers catch on quickly, as they often do, and soon enough it’s a competition of who can hurl the most biting verbal abuse. They close in on It at the centre of the cistern as it shrinks to the size of a child, whimpering.

And just before Bill can reach in and pull out It’s heart, there’s one last claw—the one that, usually, Richie removes—shooting out to plunge into Richie’s stomach, piercing through to the other side. 

Because of course there is. 

It devolves into one last fit of laughter as Bev screams, Richie dropping halfway to the ground in Ben’s arms, his guts spilling onto the ground with great efficiency. Bill lets out a half growl, half scream, and tears It’s heart from it’s chest and crushes it in his hand before It even has a chance to beg. 

Richie, meanwhile:

“Fuck,” he whines, a gasp breaking the word up into two breathy, broken syllables. There’s no way he’s not going to die from this. His friends hover above him, varying degrees of horror painting their faces like it’s the first time they’ve seen Richie’s insides. “It’s okay,” he says hoarsely, “I’ll just wake up today again. No biggie.” He gives them a smile that is not well received. 

Eddie whips off his sweater and presses it to Richie’s stomach, pain exploding out to the tips of his fingers as pressure is applied. “We have to get him help.”

“No,” Richie moans as the losers shift around him, Mike carefully placing his hands under Richie’s shoulders while Ben gets ready to lift from underneath his legs. “Don’t bother, it’s—it’s…” The sentence falls away in favour of a shout that’s ripped from his throat as he’s lifted into the air, entire body screaming in pain. 

“We’re not leaving you down here,” Eddie says forcefully, not a discussion.

Richie being Richie, argues anyway. “I’ll wake up and try again, it’s okay.” His own voice sounds faraway and foreign.

“What about us?” He thinks it might be Bev. He’s pretty sure he lost his glasses somewhere along the way because everything has gone blurry and dark.

It takes him a second to realize that he’s been asked a question. “What?”

There’s a hand on his cheek. “What happens to  _ us  _ when you die? We don’t just stop existing.”

And it’s funny, Richie’s done a lot of thinking today, but he’s never really allowed his thoughts to wander into that territory before. But now Bev’s opened the door and he can’t help but wonder—what  _ does  _ happen to these losers? What happened to all the other losers on all the other todays? Is there a Bev that sat in the shower for an hour scrubbing Richie’s blood off her face? What if there’s still an Eddie that didn’t just lose one of his first friends, but all three? Is there a world where Mike never got to leave Derry? Where Ben didn’t get a chance to tell Bev it was him? What about Bill, were there still versions of him that have to live with the guilt of not just killing his brother, but all his friends, too? 

Do they just stop existing? It would be awfully narcissistic of Richie to believe that the world starts and stops with himself. 

If that’s the case, then he has to end it at any cost. He’ll sacrifice himself. He  _ deserves  _ it, if there really is seventy odd different sets of losers out there, dealing with the consequences that he never cared or had to face. He wonders if it’s really the solution, if maybe he  _ can  _ just choose to die for good while the others go on to thrive and lead happy lives. Or maybe that’s just his lack of self-preservation talking. Either way he knows it’s not the answer. He’s tried it. He knows that there’s probably something worse awaiting him at the end of this circular tunnel, the loss and consequence of every single today ready to bury him alive. 

(But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, now. That comes later. Not much later, but later.)

He tries to give Bev an answer but can’t. Words are too far for him to reach, floating away past his fingertips in the pain-induced haze. He’s fading quickly. He knows that it’s almost over, but for now it’s time to try again.

  
  


Headache, blue light, voices. Richie’s pretty sure he’d drop dead from surprise if he ever woke up to anything else. 

Downstairs, Bev asks him what he saw in the deadlights.

**Where did you go?**

**>[The future.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186137#workskin)**

**>[The past.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186086#workskin)**

**>[Both.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186122#workskin)**


	34. let's do this one more time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

He doesn’t wake from sleep so much as he’s thrust back into consciousness, gasping as his hands shake from the receding cold, sudden sensation sending his nerves into an overloaded frenzy. He hears the echoes of that godawful voice wheezing in his ears:  _ try again, try again, try again.  _ He’s starting to think that there  _ isn’t  _ any fix to this, no magic action or revelation that will push him through to the next day. His bargaining is over, time to move on to depression and give It what it wants and float for real, swimming in that big dark nothing without waking up from it like he has now. 

But that would be easy. Picking up a pen and writing the note he really wanted to write is harder, so he drags himself out of bed for the seventy fourth time in a row and tries again. 

_ Dear Losers, _

_ I know for a fact that you guys are going to think this is crazy, but hear me out. I’m stuck in a time loop. Today is the seventy fourth time I’ve lived this day. I think—god, I don’t even know for sure anymore. I’ve seen all of you die countless times. I’ve died countless times. Even if we beat It (which we have) I still wake up today.  _

_ You guys usually don’t believe me right off the bat, so here are some things to convince you guys I’m telling the truth: Mike, I’m sorry, but the ritual doesn’t work, even if we all believe it will, It knows that. But we don’t need it, we just have to make it small (All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit). Bill, you’re not actually happy with your wife and you guys should split up. Also, it’s not your fault that Georgie is gone. Ben, I love you, but please write another poem. I’m tired of those same three lines over and over again. And, Bev—you saw us as adults in the deadlights. You didn’t know it then, but you were really seeing the time loops that I’m stuck in. And you saw me, in the deadlights, which brings me to the reason of this whole thing. _

_ I have to let It trap me in the deadlights and float, just like Bev did the first time. It’s the only way I can see what she sees and start to figure out how to get out of this thing. I’m going to Neibolt, down in the cistern, and I’m going to confront It alone. You guys have to let me try, then come get me later. Just a couple of hours, like the first time. I need you guys to trust me, please. The five of you (and Stan—he was here, actually, for one of the loops) are my family and I love you. Hopefully, I’ll see you soon. If not, then I guess I’ll just wake up today and try again.  _

_ This next part is just for Eddie. _

_ Hey, Eds. I know you’re probably grumbling about not getting your own little thing up there—that’s because I have a bit more to say to you. Also I know you’re grumpy this morning because you’re thinking about your mom, and Myra. It’s not your fault. You didn’t deserve any of that. I wish I could have been there for you, after Derry. I would have told you I was in love with you and we would have gotten to give it a real try, a house and a dog and kids and everything. I know that’s what you wanted because you’ve told me, about twenty different times now. I wanted it, too. And I still do. I hope that someday we can have our gross little pomeranian you want so badly (It used that against you, a couple times) and the rest of the life we deserve together.  _

_ Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, and sorry it was like this. I’ve spent two months stuck in today, thinking about all the things I would have done if I got all these chances back then. But we can’t go back, and right now, I can’t go forward. Please make sure the others don’t rush to Neibolt too soon. I know they’ll want to. I need to do this. I need to make sure you live. It’s not worth it if you’re not there with me.  _

_ I love you guys. Thank you for making this thing bearable. There’s no way I would have been able to make it this far without you being there. Not that I really had a choice, but still. Be safe. See you soon and see you tomorrow, hopefully. _

_ Richie. _

He goes through the motions one more time: fire escape, car, Neibolt, cistern. He prays that this time his note works and that they come get him at just the right moment. He knows he can just try again if they don’t, but. 

He’s tired. He’s really, really tired. And while it was terrifying, confronting the reality of the deadlights and feeling himself float away from his body and his life and anything tethering him to this world, it was also… It was a rest, in some kind of way. Right now he’d still take a thousand more todays if it meant he had the slightest chance of making it out of this with the five of them, but he also knows that he’s not going to be strong forever. And besides—maybe if he’s out of he picture, the rest of the losers can be released from this hellish Bill Murray homage and live their lives, clown-free. 

He’d want that. He’d really, really want that.

It’s something he tucks away in the corner of his mind, saving it for later. He’ll do it, if he has to, but for now, he’s going to give the deadlights another shot.

**Congratulations! Richie has successfully entered the deadlights, again. Let’s hope that this time, his friends get there in time to save him. Now, what would you like to see?**

**>[Something from the future.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185966#workskin)**

**>[Something from the past.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59185948#workskin)**


	35. if i could hold you for one hour more

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none but like bro it's sad as fuck

“It was a memory.”

“A memory?” Bev looks surprised, the rest of them confused. Ben crosses his arms and tilts his head.

“I thought you were supposed to see the future in the deadlights,” he says, sharing a look with Bev.

Richie shrugs. “Yeah, me too.”

Eddie smirks and stifles a snort, the rest of the group turning to him expectantly. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, waving, “I just—that’s sort of lame, right? Aren’t we all remembering stuff on our own? Why’d you have to go in the deadlights to do it?”

Richie barely resists the urge to send him a glare. “I’m doing this for you, you know,” he says bitterly, adding in an edge of sarcasm just so it’s not mean. Eddie’s face drops almost immediately.

“The fuck is  _ that  _ supposed to mean?”

“It—ugh.” Richie groans and tilts his head back to look at the ceiling for a second or two. When he comes back, they’re all waiting. “It means that the very first time we did this,  _ you  _ were the one that died,” he explains, pointing a finger to Eddie, “so it’s pretty likely that you’re the whole reason I’m stuck in this thing.”

“But did—didn’t y-y-you say you s-saved him already?” Bill cuts in, brow furrowed. Mike watches him as he says it, then mirrors his expression, both of them turning back to Richie with a frown. 

Richie sighs. “Yeah, that’s—that’s the thing. We’ve all made it out like, dozens of times. So I don’t know.” He feels deflated, already over it. He was  _ so  _ ready for the deadlights to solve everything, but he hasn’t learned anything. 

Bev shifts on the armchair, chewing on her lip nervously. “What was the memory?”

“Hm?”

“What did you see?”

_Oh._ Richie’s not sure why that’s important, but he goes through it anyway, skipping over the more introspective details, self-conscious when he feels Eddie’s gaze on him, intense and open. Why should it matter? Just like Eddie said, they all remember random shit all the time, and none of it means anything. The further he gets into the story, the more deluded he feels, like something is _wrong._ He spent seventy fucking days trying to figure this shit out just to be rewarded with the repressed memory of one of the worst moments of his life? There’s no way.

He finishes the story with an exasperated huff and a shrug, eyes darting over to where Eddie is staring at him, face a shade redder than it was before. 

Bev looks at him with wide eyes. “Oh, honey.”

He whips back to her. “What?”

“Richie,” she says softly, tilting her head all sorry like. He hates the look she’s giving him, wants to go over and carefully peel it off her face, then never think about it again.

It looks like she knows something he doesn’t.

“Bev,  _ what?” _ He gives the room a quick once-over to gauge if anyone else is in on her forthcoming truthbomb, but only Eddie seems to have any sort of clue, his eyes now turned toward the floor, squinting in concentration. Richie turns to him, taking a step forward. “What is it?”

Bev opens her mouth to speak then, but Eddie beats her to it. 

“I have to die, don’t I?” 

“No,” Richie says at the exact same time as Bev says, “I think you might.”

“Absolutely not,” Richie snaps. “There is no—no. It doesn’t even  _ work, _ you’ve died like twenty times already. You don’t—Eddie, you don’t have to die.”

He looks up at Richie with a look he’s seen hundreds of times before: before heading down into the cistern, when they found Mike’s bike on the side of the road, when Richie pulled himself out of Eddie’s sheets at dawn on those mornings before school where neither of them could sleep _ —I’m afraid, but I know I have to do it.  _ That’s what that look says. 

“Eddie,  _ no.” _

“It makes sense,” he says, almost pleading, eyes glassy. Bill lowers his face into his hand. “I died, so that’s what was supposed to happen. But you—you hit a wall and you couldn’t deal with it so you got stuck in this messed up fucking thing.” He sounds like he’s guessing, but Bev looks like she believes him, white as he’s ever seen her, like when Richie repeats her own words back to her verbatim. Eddie softens as Richie looks back and forth between them, panicked.

“I would have been the same, for you. I—” he shakes his head, shutting his eyes tightly. “You went into the deadlights,” he starts again, matter of factly, “and you wanted to see something that would help you break the time loop. And you saw me, leaving. Maybe to break it, you have to let me—let me leave.” 

Bev and Eddie share a look then, and it’s all the confirmation he needs to know that they’re on the same page. 

He shakes his head vigorously. “No, you’re wrong, it’s not—I can’t. You can’t.” 

He feels his throat closing up, trying to chase away any crazy ideas worming their way down from his brain. And it’s his first instinct, to run, because of  _ course  _ it is. Denial is built into his blood—he’s been running ever since he was born. He did it when he was a kid, he did it when he was an adult, and he’s done it now, every single today. There’s a part of him, one that maybe wasn’t there at the start of this but is definitely present now, that knows that what Eddie is saying is probably true. It feels wrong, instantly, deep in his bones, which makes him think that it’s most likely  _ right.  _

He just doesn’t want to believe it.

Mike raises a hand. “Guys—”

“Why does it have to be Eddie?” Richie bursts, anger bubbling up inside him. “Why does he have to die? Why did Stan have to die? Or Georgie, or fucking any of them? Why? Who the fuck decided that?”

“Richie—”

“No! Bev, listen. I know you saw what you saw in the deadlights. But maybe that doesn’t—”

“I didn’t see Eddie or Stan, Richie,” she says then, eyes shut tight in frustration. She opens them when the room falls silent again, defeated. 

Richie’s hands start to shake. “What?”

Everyone’s looking at her, waiting. She curls in on herself slightly but her voice remains strong, even. “In the deadlights, I saw us at adults. I saw us… here, in the time loops, I guess. And I saw us after that.”

“And?”

And, this is where the other shoe finally drops. “And I didn’t see Stan or Eddie.”

He tries his best to keep his voice level as the anger rushes in again. “I’ve done this seventy times and you never  _ once  _ told me that.”

“That’s because I don’t want to tell you!” she cries, standing. “I don’t want it to be true! Do you think it’s  _ convenient  _ or  _ fun  _ for me to have this thing in me? Do you think getting put in the deadlights was a fuckin’  _ field trip?” _ She stares at him angrily for a second, chest heaving, then crumbles again. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry. I know—I know you know it isn’t. I’m just—I don’t see what else it could mean.”

Richie feels like an asshole. A desperate, bargaining asshole. 

“Tell me what you saw.”

“What?”

“Every single loop. Let’s compare. Maybe there’s something I haven’t tried yet.”

It’s Bill, this time. “Richie,” he tries, giving him that look again, like he’s fifteen and about to be beeped. 

“You’d do the same, if you could save Georgie,” he says, regretting it immediately. Mike and Ben wince in the background as Bill’s face drops. He stands and walks out of the room without a word, Eddie letting out a weak  _ Bill  _ as Mike goes to follow him. Richie takes a deep breath and turns back to Bev. 

They do end up going through everything she can remember seeing, the two of them sitting knee to knee on the couch locked into the world’s weirdest, most tearfully intense staring contest ever held. It’s a strange, strange back and forth and the others slowly filter out to grab food or coffee or fresh air as they settle into their own little rhythm of it. Eddie paces nervously in the hallway, then disappears to go talk to Bill. Only Ben really lingers, standing in the kitchen pretending to make lunch as Richie and Bev slowly and methodically exhaust their options. 

And exhaust them, they do. After an hour and a half of back and forth, they come to the conclusion that 1) Richie has lived through every single flash of this day that went through Bev’s mind in the deadlights, and 2) Bev also saw them, after It. 

For herself, she saw water. She saw Mike packing up his car and leaving Derry. She saw Bill gushing about how proud he was of his new book’s ending. She saw Ben on a boat with a dog. She saw Richie outside, kneeling by a fence, alone. 

And that’s all she saw. 

“What about me?”

She frowns, barely there. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what about me? What if I die instead, take his place?” As he says it, he wants it. He wants it  _ bad.  _ “I’m already in fucking hell being trapped in the same day for months on end, why not just finish the job? And then Eddie gets to live, and—and  _ yeah.  _ Why can’t it be me, instead?”

Bev looks helpless. “Richie.” 

_ God,  _ he never wants anyone to say his name ever again. It snaps him out of the world of sacrifices and peace and back into reality as he shrugs at her. “What?” She doesn’t say anything else, just gives him a sad sort of look like she expects him to parse it and figure out exactly what she’s thinking. They used to be able to do that, sometimes. 

“I’m going to bed,” he says, standing up abruptly. The anger has passed through bargaining and now given way to sadness, spreading its way over his skin and wrapping itself around him like a blanket. He doesn’t want to talk to Bev anymore, doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He drags himself up the stairs, ignoring the rest of their friends, and falls into bed face-first.

He wants to disappear. Today—this today,  _ every  _ today—is just one massive fucking mess, and he wants it to be over. He wants to tap out, he’s had enough. He doesn’t care what happens anymore, as long as Eddie gets to be okay. But, as he’s swiftly beginning to realize, that just might not happen by the time tomorrow comes. 

It’s all a sick, sick joke. 

He stays in bed for a while, maybe an hour or two, before the door opens softly, clicking shut a second or two later.

“Rich?” Eddie’s voice floats in softly from the other side of the room. 

Richie lifts a hand from his head in a half-hearted salute. “Hey.”

Eddie gives a little sigh and then there are footsteps making their way around the bed. It dips as he sits down beside Richie and asks, carefully, “What’s up?”

This one might be the least effort he’s ever put into it: “I’m in love with you,” Richie grumbles, not bothering to lift his head from the pillow. 

“Yeah, I—I think I might have known.”

He sits up. Eddie is perched on the edge of the bed, sheepish. 

“Well,  _ that’s  _ new.” 

“What?”

Richie shuffles so that he’s on his side, facing Eddie. He smiles, sadly. “You’ve never said that before,” he tells him, wonder leaking out of his voice. 

“No?”

“No, it’s always ‘I never thought you could love me’ this and ‘I always wanted to tell you’ that,” he mocks, reaching a hand out and grabbing Eddie’s fingers gently. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, taking his hand and pressing it to Richie’s chest to shove him out of the way, scooching himself down into the spot so that they’re lying face to face. 

“Okay, well that’s true,” he says, “I meant, like, this morning. All, uh—” he does a little circling gesture with his hand,  _ “—that.  _ I’d have to be pretty dense not to clue in when someone’s begging to sacrifice their life for mine.” He gives him a pointed look, mischievous little smile playing on his lips, and Richie rolls his eyes.

“Didn’t know you heard that. And besides, I would have done that for any of them,” he says sarcastically.

Eddie nods, serious. “I know you would have. That’s one of the reasons I love you.” He says it so plainly, like it’s a truth as fundamental as the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun—perihelion, aphelion, repeat—and Richie feels himself falling into orbit. 

“I don’t want you to die,” he says, voice cracking halfway through. 

Eddie brings his hand up to Richie’s face and wipes a tear. “And I don’t want  _ you  _ to be stuck in time loop jail forever,” he says, sort of laughing as his eyes fill up with tears to match Richie’s. He speaks again, words splitting wide open. “I’d die if it meant you got to keep going. I would, Richie.” 

The air is thick and dark around them, only a thin frame of light peeking out from behind the curtains. Richie hasn’t spent a lot of afternoons in bed so it still feels a little brand new, but in that sideways, déjà vu kind of way. The same way they’re talking of sacrifices, the same principle but tipped just enough that it warps into something unfamiliar. Richie doesn’t want it.

“I don’t want to keep going if you’re not there to go with me,” he whispers.

Eddie matches his volume. “I don’t know if we get to choose that.”

“Just this morning—many this mornings, for the record—you asked me if I was trying to do a bit. You don’t get to be Mr. Wisdom Of The Universe all of a sudden. I feel like that should be my job.”

Eddie gives a little smile at that. “I think your job right now is denial.”

“More like depression.”

Eddie acknowledges that with no more than a silent exhale, then moves on, clearly not done. “I just think—you saw me leaving, in the deadlights. That wasn’t random, Richie. I think… you’ve had time to think about and deal with the forgetting, and I think this might have been also time to get ready for—” 

“But you haven’t,” Richie says, breaking again. Eddie pulls him in close to his chest as he shakes, hiccuping through his words. _ “You  _ haven’t gotten the time to do that. You haven’t gotten the time to do  _ anything, _ you—” he cuts himself off with a sob and clutches Eddie’s shirt in his hands. It hits him again, the insurmountable loss of it all. Eddie said he’s had time to confront it, but Richie hasn’t gotten over  _ shit.  _ It still hurts just as much as it did on day one, and day ten, and day thirty and forty and fifty. It’s never not going to hurt.

“I know,” Eddie says, no argument left in his voice. “I know. But I… it’s okay.”

The front of Eddie’s shirt is entirely soaked through when Richie pulls away to look at him. “No, it’s not,” he says, like a petulant child through the snot and tears. 

“No, it’s not,” Eddie echoes, wiping the tears from his face once more. “But I think it’s going to have to be.”

Richie doesn’t have anything to say to that. He doesn’t have any more jokes, and there’s nowhere to run, either. He has the walls of this house and the walls of today, and that’s about it. He has fear, too, but time is starting to fade away as it stretches out in front of him. 

(Just him.)

He thought about that a lot, earlier: constants. For a long time, he thought it was just time—funny, calling it that when this whole ordeal has proved that it’s anything  _ but  _ constant. But for him, right now, today, the past seventy odd todays, it is. He  _ thought  _ it was. He thought: time, and fear. Those were the only two things he could trust to remain, everything else just a variable slipping through his fingers at the slightest change on the wind.

And yes, it is still today, and yes, he’s still fucking scared, but those aren’t the only things he knows are absolute.

He knows that he will love Eddie every day, and that every day, Eddie will love him. This, more so than time or fear or the repeated rise and fall of the sun or the hangover in the morning, is an irrevocable and indisputable fact. It’s constant, thrumming low and steady in his chest at all times. It’s never not been there, and it will never leave, either. It’s simple. Richie Tozier loves Eddie Kaspbrak, and Eddie Kaspbrak loves Richie Tozier. Sure, they can die. They have, and they will. They can die, but this won’t. 

Gravity is a universal constant, after all. Why not love? Is that redundant? Are they not the same thing? The reason the universe exists, matter coalescing until it’s dense enough to spark. Two souls, entwined. These are the same sentences, just different words. Richie would die for Eddie, Eddie would die for Richie. Love will be the thing that saves and destroys them both. This is nothing but a litany.

Later that night, he corners Bill in the upstairs hallway.

“I’m sorry,” he says forcefully, getting right to it as Bill freezes, looking at him with wide eyes. “I was a dick earlier today. It was way out of line and I should never have said it.”

“Oh, uh, thuh-thanks, Rich, I—”

“It’s not your fault,” he continues, watching Bill’s mouth open and shut in front of him, that same guilty look he’s seen a million times. “It’s not,” he repeats, “I know you think it is, but it isn’t. You were a _kid.”_ _Then what’s my excuse?_ his brain asks him, unprompted. Richie shrinks a little bit but stays focused on Bill, his eyes now filling with tears, clearly uncomfortable with all of this.

He realizes now that Bill has most likely never heard this. Or, at least, not since they were kids. But what kid is going to believe a bunch of other kids telling them something isn’t their fault when their parents are right there telling them the opposite? 

He says it again, just for good measure. “It wasn’t your fault.” Bill finally tears his gaze away, ashamed, and crosses his arms as he looks at the floor with his lips pressed tightly together. 

“I could have gone down in the sewers earlier,” he whispers, “in October, when it happened.”

“You were  _ twelve,” _ Richie says, grabbing his shoulders. “And It was a fucking alien demon clown. Bill, there’s—there’s nothing you could have  _ done.  _ You already did more than anyone. You—” something inside him starts to falter, his voice going along with it, and Bill looks up. “You did everything, and sometimes that’s still not enough. But it’s not your fault.”

“Richie.” Bill’s lip is quivering dangerously. He pulls Richie into a hug and promptly loses it, entire body shaking against Richie’s as he holds him tight. He gets out a few wheezing attempts at words and Richie shushes him softly.

“It’s okay,” he says, “you don’t—you don’t have to keep blaming yourself. It’s what happened, there wasn’t anything you could’ve done.” He only realizes that he’s crying too when he goes to put his cheek back onto Bill’s shoulder and finds that his shirt is already wet. The words come spilling out of him now, uninhibited. “You’re keeping yourself trapped. He wouldn’t want you to be suffering like this, for so long. He won’t hate you if you let go.” He’s speaking in whispers now, hushed and urgent. All of a sudden it all feels so dire, so imperative that Bill understands what he’s saying. After It, when they were kids, Bill never let any of them help him. He wouldn’t talk about it—shut them down every time, flipping back and forth between depression and denial. Richie felt helpless then, but he isn’t now. 

“You have to let yourself move on,” he says, “you have to accept it.” And, well—

_ Oh.  _ That’s _ what they’re really talking about.  _

Bill seems to realize it at the same time Richie does, because he pulls back and says, “It’s not your fault if he dies. If it’s not my fault, then it’s not your fault, either.” It’s not a negotiation, even with the tears still streaming down his face. And Richie has no fight left in him anyway, so he just nods weakly and buries his face back into Bill’s shoulder with an  _ okay.  _

He’s done this with Bill a few times before, but he’s always woken up the next today with no memory of any progress made. Richie thinks that today might be different, that it might stick. Or if not today, perhaps the next one. 

He doesn’t sleep that night. 

They’ve done it maybe a half dozen times before, and it never works—the day simply starts over again as soon as he falls asleep. The longest he’s made it was eleven in the morning, “tomorrow”. A tomorrow that was almost as cruel as the today, because it only stuck around as long as he could keep his eyes open. Just a glimpse into what he seemingly could never have. He’s not reaching for it tonight. He just doesn’t want today to begin again, not just yet.

Moonlight spills onto the sheets, Eddie glowing pale blue beside him. It’s the same scene, and Richie knows the blocking. He doesn’t have to move his eyes off Eddie to know that the curtain is hanging uneven, bunched up to the left so that a thicker strip of light spills in on the right. He never bothers to fix it. He knows that the space underneath the door will light up in four minutes then go dark again in six, because Bill has to use the bathroom. He knows that Eddie’s phone is lying facedown on the night stand, turned off in a private moment of defiance against the gentle, unloving hands that have held him hostage. He knows that the night waits patiently for his surrender.

He watches Eddie, instead.

He’s breathing quietly, eyes downcast but not closed, focused on where he’s holding Richie’s hand with his thumb slowly rubbing circles into his palm. This might be his favourite part—just being with Eddie, in the simplest and most innocent sense of the word. Lying beside him Richie just feels  _ right, _ like this is where he’s supposed to have been all along, the rest of his adult life just a lead-up, unnecessary and unimportant. It’s in this space that he gets to exist, and exist as he should: with Eddie, both legs and souls entwined.

The night marches on, kindness spreading thin as their breathing slows, drifting. Neither of them have spoken in a while, both content to just lie there together, the spoken and the unspoken laid out in the space between them, alight. They had the tough conversation earlier; this is simply the aftermath, resigned and savouring what they know is fleeting. 

(Today is infinite, if you believe it is. Richie’s heard something kind of like that, before. He’s pretty sure it was a lie that time, too. 

The wall is beginning to crumble—Eddie’s landed the first blow. It’s up to you and Richie to finish the job, if you’re strong enough.)

“Hey,” Richie says, an hour away from dawn. “Can I show you something?”

He takes Eddie to the edge of town as the sky melts from black to a muddy violet, stars fading overhead. He realizes that he’s never taken Eddie here before when he gives Richie a puzzled look as the car rolls to a stop. 

“What?” he asks sleepily, squinting over as Richie undoes his seatbelt. “The kissing bridge? You could have just kissed me at the—what?” He shakes his head as if trying to ward off sleep, words all jumbled in confusion.

Richie rolls his eyes, more fondly than anything, and gets out of the car without a word, crossing over the other side to grab Eddie’s door. Eddie pouts up at him adorably.

“S’cold,” he whines, hugging his arms into his chest.

“God,” Richie mutters under his breath. He reaches down and clicks off Eddie’s seatbelt then peels off his own jacket and drapes it over him, hoisting him gently up and out of the car by his shoulders. He kisses Eddie quickly, soft and chaste. “There’s something here I wanted to show you.”

He melts into the touch, whining lowly. “Okay.”

Richie leads them over to the fence, warped and a lot less sturdy-looking than he remembers. He’s not sure exactly where his carving is, or if it’ll even still be there—perhaps the wood got replaced, or someone scratched over on top of it—but his body gravitates right to it anyway, muscle memory working backwards to find the spot he never let himself revisit until now. 

His fingers reach out to touch it right away as he spots it. The wood is not nearly as rough as it was, giving just slightly under the press of his hand. It looks as if it’s reclaiming the spot Richie dug his knife into, the etching not nearly as deep as it was—almost like it’s alive, stitching itself back together like skin, bit by tiny bit as the years have shuffled on. He smiles, remembering the feeling of the knife in his hand and his heart in his throat, threatening to spill out if he didn’t do anything about it. 

Eddie gasps softly and crouches down beside Richie. “Did you do this?” he asks, breathless, eyes darting back and forth between the carving and Richie’s smiling face.

“I thought that was kind of obvious.”

“Shut up. When?” He’s looking at Richie now with a mix of disbelief and wonder, mouth hanging open.

Richie slides his thumb over Eddie’s and blushes. “That summer, when we were thirteen,” he says, all embarrassed as if he hadn’t just kissed Eddie two minutes ago.

“Jesus,” Eddie says, “I must have ridden past this like,  _ hundreds  _ of times after that. And I never…  _ Richie.” _ He looks at Richie with the most loving, fond look he’s ever seen, eyes wet and brows furrowed. 

“Come on, Eds,” he says, half laughing, “You think I was kidding earlier when I told you I was in love with you?”

Eddie rolls his eyes like it’s a reflex, the rest of his face not once moving from its enamored look. “No, I just—” He cuts himself off in favour of pulling Richie in for a deep, lingering kiss. Richie melts into it immediately, hand fumbling off the fence post and wrapping around Eddie’s waist, pulling him closer. After a few long, long seconds Eddie finally pulls away with a  _ pop  _ and a loud, forceful exhale.

“I would have told you if I’d seen it,” he says breathlessly, sudden urgency replacing any of his prior sleepiness. “I would have told you,” he repeats, almost apologetic. Richie crumbles at the sound of it. “I would have—and we could have—” 

“I know,” he soothes. And he does, he knows. Eddie wraps his arms around him, burying his face in the crook of Richie’s neck. 

“Thank you for showing me,” he whispers thinly, so lowly Richie wouldn’t have heard it if they weren’t spoken directly into his ear. His heart aches suddenly at the realization that,  _ oh, right, it’s still just today for Eddie.  _ For Eddie, yesterday was the Jade. For Eddie, all of this was shiny and brand new and terrifying for all the reasons it was terrifying for Richie  _ plus  _ some of the ones he forgot about. For Eddie, all of this is happening for the first time. 

This Eddie hasn’t lived through seventy whatever todays. He hasn’t curled up on the couch with Richie and watched movies in the townhouse, or seen Stan, or picked up Bill from jail. He hasn’t gotten to try out dozens of different pick up lines just to see which ones get the best reactions. He hasn’t gotten to tell Richie that he loves him and know, one hundred percent and without a single doubt, that he’d say it back. He hasn’t gotten to take his shot at figuring it out—really figuring it out, without resetting what he knows every day.

No, this Eddie hasn’t done any of that. And chances are, he won’t. But what this Eddie has done is agree to die—barely three hours out of the gate, confused but fucking rolling with it because he loves Richie and his friends _that mu ch—_which is braver than anything Richie ever could have done in a thousand loops.

“Richie?”

“Hm?”

“Can we watch the sunrise?” They’re nose to nose, now, Eddie looking at him with a quiet, sad sort of adoration as he waits patiently for a response.

Richie blinks, waiting for his brain to catch up with his ears. He tries to remember what he was just so lost in that he couldn’t hear Eddie, but finds that he can’t get the thought back. “Uh,” he says unhelpfully.

But Eddie just smiles, grabbing Richie’s hand and pulling him down the road to the spot where the fence ends and a worn dirt path appears out of the tall grass. He tries to apologize but Eddie shuts him down immediately with a squeeze on his hand, leading him along a familiar route in the grass. 

“I came here once,” Eddie says once they’ve settled on the ground, flattening the long grass underneath them, “the night before I left Derry.” He turns to him with a small smile then puts his head on Richie’s shoulder. 

There’s a beat where Richie thinks he might continue, but he doesn’t. “Yeah?” he prompts, not wanting to pry.

“Yeah, I—” he looks down at his palm and the scar there, flipping Richie’s hand over to compare. “I was afraid I’d forget you, like the others seemed to forget us. I didn’t sleep at all that last night. By like, five? I couldn’t take it anymore so I climbed out my window just like you had all those times.” He lifts his head and gives Richie a knowing look. “Not nearly as hard as you’d made it out to be, by the way.”

“We can’t all be natural born athletes, Eds. I have other gifts.”

Eddie snorts a silent laugh. “Mhmm. Anyway, I—I was halfway to your house before I realized what I was doing. I just… I was scared of what I might tell you, so I came here instead. I didn’t know where else to go.” He gestures vaguely to the space in front of them: a couple bigger rocks for sitting, the bridge in the distance with water streaming below, and long, lush grass everywhere else. “Y’know, I don’t think we ever came back here after we made the oath. At least, not all together.”

Richie can’t recall a time where they had, either. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“I remember, I just sat here—on that rock, actually—and while I waited for the sun to rise I just kept telling myself that we’d all come back, that I’d see you again. I know we talked about visiting each other at college, but I think a part of me knew, even then.”

“That we’d forget?”

He nods sadly, sighing. “Yeah.” 

The sky gradually fades into a dingy sort of white as the first rays of sun peek over the bridge. In the distance, birds keen. It’s not exactly warm, yet, but it’s getting there, skin tingling under the thin sunlight. Richie starts to feel himself drifting in earnest, eyelids heavy and slow, and he knows that they don’t have much longer.

Eddie, his voice small and faraway, knows it too. “Hey Richie?”

“Yeah?”

“When I’m dead—”

“No, Eds, I—”

“Richie, please.” His eyes are closed but the desperation in Eddie’s voice alone is enough to shut Richie up. Eddie takes in a long, stuttering breath and laces their fingers together tightly. “When I’m dead,” he starts again, “I need you to keep going.”

“Eddie—”

“I mean it, Rich. You can’t just let yourself be miserable and drown in grief for the rest of your life. You have to  _ live. _ If not for you, then for me. If you don’t, I’ll haunt you.”

Richie sniffles. “That sounds kinda hot, actually.”

“Richie.” Eddie scoffs and leans into him like he’s attempting a nudge.

“Fine, I’m sorry.”

“And start writing your own jokes. You’re funny,” he adds, voice breaking on the  _ funny  _ and sending him into a torrent of quiet sobs. Richie holds him tighter and chokes out something like a laugh, something like weeping.

“I’m serious,” Eddie continues, full on hiccuping, “you are. You’re _ so  _ funny, Richie. I’m sorry I always told you you weren’t.”

Richie starts to laugh more than he’s crying, because—he doesn’t know why, but he’s sure there’s a reason, somewhere. “It’s okay,” he assures, delirious. 

Eddie nods furiously, sniffling. His jaw moves where it’s pressed up against Richie’s shoulder as if he’s opening his mouth and closing it, repeatedly, trying to figure out what to say. Richie already knows what he’s thinking:  _ I wish I told you, I wish it was different, I wish we could do it from the start, I wish it didn’t have to end like this, I wish I didn’t have to leave you.  _ There’s a thousand different variations, each and every one already long since lamented in Richie’s mind. Eddie must know this, because instead he settles on the one thing Richie  _ won’t  _ ever wear out:

“I love you, Richie.”

“I love you too, Eds.” 

**Are you ready?**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186158#workskin)**


	36. i'd like to believe that i'd do it again (and again, and again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none but like bro it's sad as fuck

“Well, I went in the deadlights twice ‘cause I fucked it up the first time. It’s—it’s a long story. I saw a memory, and I think something from the future.” 

“A memory?” Bev looks surprised, the rest of them confused. Ben crosses his arms and tilts his head.

“I thought you were just supposed to see the future in the deadlights,” he says, sharing a look with Bev.

Richie shrugs. “Yeah, me too.”

Eddie smirks and stifles a snort, the rest of the group turning to him expectantly. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, waving, “I just—that’s sort of lame, right? Aren’t we all remembering stuff on our own? Why’d you have to go in the deadlights to do it?”

Richie barely resists the urge to send him a glare. “I’m doing this for you, you know,” he says bitterly, adding in an edge of sarcasm just so it’s not mean. Eddie’s face drops almost immediately.

“The fuck is  _ that  _ supposed to mean?”

“It—ugh.” Richie groans and tilts his head back to look at the ceiling for a second or two. When he comes back, they’re all waiting. “It means that the very first time we did this,  _ you  _ were the one that died,” he explains, pointing a finger to Eddie, “so it’s pretty likely that you’re the whole reason I’m stuck in this thing.”

“But did—didn’t y-y-you say you s-saved him already?” Bill cuts in, brow furrowed. Mike watches him as he says it, then mirrors his expression, both of them turning back to Richie with a frown. 

Richie sighs. “Yeah, that’s—that’s the thing. We’ve all made it out like, dozens of times. So I don’t know.” He feels deflated, already over it. He was  _ so  _ ready for the deadlights to solve everything, but he hasn’t learned anything. 

Bev shifts on the armchair, chewing on her lip nervously. “Okay, what was the memory?”

“Hm?”

“What did you see?”

_Oh._ Richie’s not sure why that’s important, but he goes through it anyway, skipping over the more introspective details, self-conscious when he feels Eddie’s gaze on him, intense and open. Why should it matter? Just like Eddie said, they all remember random shit all the time, and none of it means anything. The further he gets into the story, the more deluded he feels, like something is _wrong._ He spent seventy fucking days trying to figure this shit out just to be rewarded with the repressed memory of one of the worst moments of his life? There’s no way.

He finishes the story with an exasperated huff and a shrug, eyes darting over to where Eddie is staring at him, face a shade redder than it was before. 

Bev looks like she’s controlling her reaction, face oddly neutral, maybe falling just a little sadder than anything else. An awful feeling starts to creep into Richie’s stomach. “And the thing from—from the future, you said? What made you think it was from the future?”

He looks at the floor and says, “Uh,” which does not help his case in any respect. Everyone turns to him again, suddenly suspicious. 

Mike tilts his head. “Rich?”

He can feel Eddie’s eyes on him, and forces himself to stare straight ahead. “I was, like, the same age as I am now,” he says quickly, “I was just… in Derry. Where we used to bike, and stuff. It felt kinda sad. I don’t know.” He feels it swirling around him, the distinct air of mourning that enveloped the vision. He feels sick. 

Then, Bev raises her eyebrows carefully. “Out on the way to the barrens?”

He frowns, defensive. “Yeah?” She looks down, letting a out a quiet  _ fuck  _ and sighing. Richie crosses his arms. “What? What is it, Bev? Did you—what, did you see that too?” He widens his eyes slightly, like a  _ please don’t tell them if you know what I’m talking about. _

She looks up, glances over to Eddie quickly, then back to Richie. “Were you wearing a grey sweater?” She doesn’t sound like she wants to be right, but judging by the way her face falls at Richie’s reaction, she is.

She looks at him, crumbling. “Oh, honey.”

“You don’t know if that’s what it means,” he says, almost before she finishes. He knows it’s desperate and pathetic, zero to a hundred in under a second. The rest of the losers stay silent, tension holding the room upright. 

“Richie,” Bev says softly, tilting her head all sorry like. He hates the look she’s giving him, wants to go over and carefully peel it off her face, then never think about it again.

It looks like she knows something he wants to pretend he doesn’t.

“Bev,  _ what?”  _ He gives the room a quick once-over to gauge if anyone else is in on her forthcoming truthbomb, but only Eddie seems to have any sort of clue, his eyes now turned toward the floor, squinting in concentration. Richie turns to him, taking a step forward. “What is it?”

Bev opens her mouth to speak then, but Eddie beats her to it. 

“I have to die, don’t I?” 

“No,” Richie says at the exact same time as Bev says, “I think you might.”

“Absolutely not,” Richie snaps. “There is no—no. It doesn’t even  _ work,  _ you’ve died like twenty times already. You don’t—Eddie, you don’t have to die.”

He looks up at Richie with a look he’s seen hundreds of times before: before heading down into the cistern, when they found Mike’s bike on the side of the road, when Richie pulled himself out of Eddie’s sheets at dawn on those mornings before school where neither of them could sleep _ —I’m afraid, but I know I have to do it.  _ That’s what that look says. 

“Eddie,  _ no.” _

“It makes sense,” he says, almost pleading, eyes glassy. Bill lowers his face into his hand. “I died, so that’s what was supposed to happen. But you—you hit a wall and you couldn’t deal with it so you got stuck in this messed up fucking thing.” He sounds like he’s guessing, but Bev looks like she believes him, white as he’s ever seen her, like when Richie repeats her own words back to her verbatim. Eddie softens as Richie looks back and forth between them, panicked.

“I would have been the same, for you. I—” he shakes his head, shutting his eyes tightly. “You went into the deadlights,” he starts again, matter of factly, “and you wanted to see something that would help you break the time loop. You saw yourself alone, after It. In—in a sweater? In my sweater?” He looks to Bev as if for confirmation, then gestures down to the sweater he’s currently wearing, an exact match for the one Richie saw, except in red. He exhales shakily and continues. “And you saw me, leaving. Maybe to break it, you have to let me—let me leave.” 

Bev and Eddie share a look then, and it’s all he needs to know that they’re on the same page. 

Richie shakes his head vigorously. “No, you’re wrong, it’s not—I can’t. You can’t.” 

He feels his throat closing up, trying to chase away any crazy ideas worming their way down from his brain. And it’s his first instinct, to run, because of  _ course  _ it is. Denial is built into his blood—he’s been running ever since he was born. He did it when he was a kid, he did it when he was an adult, and he’s done it now, every single today. There’s a part of him, one that maybe wasn’t there at the start of this but is definitely present now, that knows that what Eddie is saying is probably true. It feels wrong, instantly, deep in his bones, which makes him think that it’s most likely  _ right.  _

He just doesn’t want to believe it.

Mike raises a hand. “Guys—”

“Why does it have to be Eddie?” Richie bursts, anger bubbling up inside him. “Why does he have to die? Why did Stan have to die? Or Georgie, or fucking any of them? Why? Who the fuck decided that?”

“Richie—”

“No! Bev, listen. I know you saw what you saw in the deadlights. But maybe that doesn’t—”

“I didn’t see Eddie or Stan, Richie,” she says then, eyes shut tight in frustration. She opens them when the room falls silent again, defeated. 

Richie’s hands start to shake. “What?”

Everyone’s looking at her, waiting. She curls in on herself slightly but her voice remains strong, even. “In the deadlights, I saw us at adults. I saw us… here, in the time loops, I guess. And I saw us after that.”

“And?”

And, this is where the other shoe finally drops. “And I didn’t see Stan or Eddie.”

He tries his best to keep his voice level as the anger rushes in again. “I’ve done this seventy times and you never  _ once  _ told me that.”

“That’s because I don’t want to tell you!” she cries, standing. “I don’t want it to be true! Do you think it’s  _ convenient  _ or  _ fun  _ for me to have this thing in me? Do you think getting put in the deadlights was a fuckin’  _ field trip?”  _ She stares at him angrily for a second, chest heaving, then crumbles again. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry. I know—I know you know it isn’t. I’m just—I don’t see what else it could mean.”

Richie feels like an asshole. A desperate, bargaining asshole. 

“Tell me what you saw.”

“What?”

“Every single loop. Let’s compare. Maybe there’s something I haven’t tried yet.”

It’s Bill, this time. “Richie,” he tries, giving him that look again, like he’s fifteen and about to be beeped. 

“You’d do the same, if you could save Georgie,” he says, regretting it immediately. Mike and Ben wince in the background as Bill’s face drops. He stands and walks out of the room without a word, Eddie letting out a weak  _ Bill  _ as Mike goes to follow him. Richie takes a deep breath and turns back to Bev. 

They do end up going through everything she can remember seeing, the two of them sitting knee to knee on the couch locked into the world’s weirdest, most tearfully intense staring contest ever held. It’s a strange, strange back and forth and the others slowly filter out to grab food or coffee or fresh air as they settle into their own little rhythm of it. Eddie paces nervously in the hallway, then disappears to go talk to Bill. Only Ben really lingers, standing in the kitchen pretending to make lunch as Richie and Bev slowly and methodically exhaust their options. 

And exhaust them, they do. After an hour and a half of back and forth, they come to the conclusion that 1) Richie has lived through every single flash of this day that went through Bev’s mind in the deadlights, and 2) Bev also saw them, after It. 

For herself, she saw water. She saw Mike packing up his car and leaving Derry. She saw Bill on the phone, gushing about how proud he was of his new book’s ending. She saw Ben on a boat with a dog. She saw Richie outside, kneeling by a fence, alone.

And that’s all she saw. 

“What about me?”

She frowns, barely there. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what about me? What if I die instead, take his place?” As he says it, he wants it. He wants it  _ bad.  _ “I’m already in fucking hell being trapped in the same day for months on end, why not just finish the job? And then Eddie gets to live, and—and  _ yeah.  _ Why can’t it be me, instead?”

Bev looks helpless. “Richie.” 

_ God,  _ he never wants anyone to say his name ever again. It snaps him out of the world of sacrifices and peace and back into reality as he shrugs at her. “What?” She doesn’t say anything else, just gives him a sad sort of look like she expects him to parse it and figure out exactly what she’s thinking. They used to be able to do that, sometimes. 

“I’m going to bed,” he says, standing up abruptly. The anger has passed through bargaining and now given way to sadness, spreading its way over his skin and wrapping itself around him like a blanket. He doesn’t want to talk to Bev anymore, doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He drags himself up the stairs, ignoring the rest of their friends, and falls into bed face-first.

He wants to disappear. Today—this today,  _ every  _ today—is just one massive fucking mess, and he wants it to be over. He wants to tap out, he’s had enough. He doesn’t care what happens anymore, as long as Eddie gets to be okay. But, as he’s swiftly beginning to realize, that just might not happen by the time tomorrow comes. 

It’s all a sick, sick joke. 

He stays in bed for a while, maybe an hour or two, before the door opens softly, clicking shut a second or two later.

“Rich?” Eddie’s voice floats in softly from the other side of the room. 

Richie lifts a hand from his head in a half-hearted salute. “Hey.”

Eddie gives a little sigh and then there are footsteps making their way around the bed. It dips as he sits down beside Richie and asks, carefully, “What’s up?”

This one might be the least effort he’s ever put into it: “I’m in love with you,” Richie grumbles, not bothering to lift his head from the pillow. 

“Yeah, I—I think I might have known.”

He sits up. Eddie is perched on the edge of the bed, sheepish. 

“Well,  _ that’s  _ new.” 

“What?”

Richie shuffles so that he’s on his side, facing Eddie. He smiles, sadly. “You’ve never said that before,” he tells him, wonder leaking out of his voice. 

“No?”

“No, it’s always ‘I never thought you could love me’ this and ‘I always wanted to tell you’ that,” he mocks, reaching a hand out and grabbing Eddie’s fingers gently. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, taking his hand and pressing it to Richie’s chest to shove him out of the way, scooching himself down into the spot so that they’re lying face to face. 

“Okay, well that’s true,” he says, “I meant, like, this morning. All, uh-” he does a little circling gesture with his hand,  _ “—that.  _ I’d have to be pretty dense not to clue in when someone’s begging to sacrifice their life for mine.” He gives him a pointed look, mischievous little smile playing on his lips, and Richie rolls his eyes.

“Didn’t know you heard that. And besides, I would have done that for any of them,” he says sarcastically.

Eddie nods, serious. “I know you would have. That’s one of the reasons I love you.” He says it so plainly, like it’s a truth as fundamental as the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun—perihelion, aphelion, repeat—and Richie feels himself falling into orbit. 

“I don’t want you to die,” he says, voice cracking halfway through. 

Eddie brings his hand up to Richie’s face and wipes a tear. “And I don’t want  _ you  _ to be stuck in time loop jail forever,” he says, sort of laughing as his eyes fill up with tears to match Richie’s. He speaks again, words splitting wide open. “I’d die if it meant you got to keep going. I would, Richie.” 

The air is thick and dark around them, only a thin frame of light peeking out from behind the curtains. Richie hasn’t spent a lot of afternoons in bed so it still feels a little brand new, but in that sideways, déjà vu kind of way. The same way they’re talking of sacrifices, the same principle but tipped just enough that it warps into something unfamiliar. Richie doesn’t want it.

“I don’t want to keep going if you’re not there to go with me,” he whispers.

Eddie matches his volume. “I don’t know if we get to choose that.”

“Just this morning—many this mornings, for the record—you asked me if I was trying to do a bit. You don’t get to be Mr. Wisdom Of The Universe all of a sudden. I feel like that should be my job.”

Eddie gives a little smile at that. “I think your job right now is denial.”

“More like depression.”

Eddie acknowledges that with no more than a silent exhale, then moves on, clearly not done. “I just think—you saw me leaving, in the deadlights. That wasn’t random, Richie. And then with you, after, at the—I just think… you’ve had time to think about and deal with the forgetting, and I think this might have been also time to get ready for—” 

“But you haven’t,” Richie says, breaking again. Eddie pulls him in close to his chest as he shakes, hiccuping through his words.  _ “You  _ haven’t gotten the time to do that. You haven’t gotten the time to do  _ anything _ , you—” he cuts himself off with a sob and clutches Eddie’s shirt in his hands. It hits him again, the insurmountable loss of it all. Eddie said he’s had time to confront it, but Richie hasn’t gotten over  _ shit.  _ It still hurts just as much as it did on day one, and day ten, and day thirty and forty and fifty. It’s never not going to hurt.

“I know,” Eddie says, no argument left in his voice. “I know. But I… it’s okay.”

The front of Eddie’s shirt is entirely soaked through when Richie pulls away to look at him. “No, it’s not,” he says, like a petulant child through the snot and the tears. 

“No, it’s not,” Eddie echoes, wiping the tears from his face once more. “But I think it’s going to have to be.”

Richie doesn’t have anything to say to that. He doesn’t have any more jokes, and there’s nowhere to run, either. He has the walls of this house and the walls of today, and that’s about it. He has fear, too, but time is starting to fade away as it stretches out in front of him. 

(Just him.)

He thought about that a lot, earlier: constants. For a long time, he thought it was just time—funny, calling it that when this whole ordeal has proved that it’s anything  _ but  _ constant. But for him, right now, today, the past seventy odd todays, it is. He  _ thought  _ it was. He thought: time, and fear. Those were the only two things he could trust to remain, everything else just a variable slipping through his fingers at the slightest change on the wind.

And yes, it is still today, and yes, he’s still fucking scared, but those aren’t the only things he knows are absolute.

He knows that he will love Eddie every day, and that every day, Eddie will love him. This, more so than time or fear or the repeated rise and fall of the sun or the hangover in the morning, is an irrevocable and indisputable fact. It’s constant, thrumming low and steady in his chest at all times. It’s never not been there, and it will never leave, either. It’s simple. Richie Tozier loves Eddie Kaspbrak, and Eddie Kaspbrak loves Richie Tozier. Sure, they can die. They have, and they will. They can die, but this won’t. 

Gravity is a universal constant, after all. Why not love? Is that redundant? Are they not the same thing? The reason the universe exists, matter coalescing until it’s dense enough to spark. Two souls, entwined. These are the same sentences, just different words. Richie would die for Eddie, Eddie would die for Richie. Love will be the thing that saves and destroys them both. This is nothing but a litany.

Later that night, he corners Bill in the upstairs hallway.

“I’m sorry,” he says forcefully, getting right to it as Bill freezes, looking at him with wide eyes. “I was a dick earlier today. It was way out of line and I should never have said it.”

“Oh, uh, thuh-thanks, Rich, I—”

“It’s not your fault,” he continues, watching Bill’s mouth open and shut in front of him, that same guilty look he’s seen a million times. “It’s not,” he repeats, “I know you think it is, but it isn’t. You were a  _ kid.” Then what’s my excuse?  _ his brain asks him, unprompted. Richie shrinks a little bit but stays focused on Bill, his eyes now filling with tears, clearly uncomfortable with all of this.

He realizes now that Bill’s most likely never heard this. Or, at least, not since they were kids. But what kid is going to believe a bunch of other kids telling them something isn’t their fault when their parents are right there telling them the opposite? 

He says it again, just for good measure. “It wasn’t your fault.” Bill finally tears his gaze away, ashamed, and crosses his arms as he looks at the floor with his lips pressed tightly together. 

“I could have gone down in the sewers earlier,” he whispers, “in October, when it happened.”

“You were  _ twelve,” _ Richie says, grabbing his shoulders. “And It was a fucking alien demon clown. Bill, there’s—there’s nothing you could have  _ done.  _ You already did more than anyone. You—” something inside him starts to falter, his voice going along with it, and Bill looks up. “You did everything, and sometimes that’s still not enough. But it’s not your fault.”

“Richie.” Bill’s lip is quivering dangerously. He pulls Richie into a hug and promptly loses it, entire body shaking against Richie’s as he holds him tight. He gets out a few wheezing attempts at words and Richie shushes him softly.

“It’s okay,” he says, “you don’t—you don’t have to keep blaming yourself. It’s what happened, there wasn’t anything you could’ve done.” He only realizes that he’s crying too when he goes to put his cheek back onto Bill’s shoulder and finds that his shirt is already wet. The words come spilling out of him now, uninhibited. “You’re keeping yourself trapped. He wouldn’t want you to be suffering like this, for so long. He won’t hate you if you let go.” He’s speaking in whispers now, hushed and urgent. All of a sudden it all feels so dire, so imperative that Bill understands what he’s saying. After It, when they were kids, Bill never let any of them help him. He wouldn’t talk about it—shut them down every time, flipping back and forth between depression and denial. Richie felt helpless then, but he isn’t now. 

“You have to let yourself move on,” he says, “you have to accept it.” And, well—

_ Oh.  _ That’s _ what they’re really talking about.  _

Bill seems to realize it at the same time Richie does, because he pulls back and says, “It’s not your fault if he dies. If it’s not my fault, then it’s not your fault, either.” It’s not a negotiation, even with the tears still streaming down his face. And Richie has no fight left in him anyway, so he just nods weakly and buries his face back into Bill’s shoulder with an  _ okay.  _

He’s done this with Bill a few times before, but he’s always woken up the next today with no memory of any progress made. Richie thinks that today might be different, that it might stick. Or if not today, perhaps the next one. 

He doesn’t sleep that night. 

They’ve done it maybe a half dozen times before, and it never works—the day simply starts over again as soon as he falls asleep. The longest he’s made it was eleven in the morning, “tomorrow”. A tomorrow that was almost as cruel as the today, because it only stuck around as long as he could keep his eyes open. Just a glimpse into what he seemingly could never have. He’s not reaching for it tonight. He just doesn’t want today to begin again, not just yet.

Moonlight spills onto the sheets, Eddie glowing pale blue beside him. It’s the same scene, and Richie knows the blocking. He doesn’t have to move his eyes off Eddie to know that the curtain is hanging uneven, bunched up to the left so that a thicker strip of light spills in on the right. He never bothers to fix it. He knows that the space underneath the door will light up in four minutes then go dark again in six, because Bill has to use the bathroom. He knows that Eddie’s phone is lying facedown on the night stand, turned off in a private moment of defiance against the gentle, unloving hands that have held him hostage. He knows that the night waits patiently for his surrender.

He watches Eddie, instead.

He’s breathing quietly, eyes downcast but not closed, focused on where he’s holding Richie’s hand with his thumb slowly rubbing circles into his palm. This might be his favourite part—just being with Eddie, in the simplest and most innocent sense of the word. Lying beside him Richie just feels  _ right, _ like this is where he’s supposed to have been all along, the rest of his adult life just a lead-up, unnecessary and unimportant. It’s in this space that he gets to exist, and exist as he should: with Eddie, both legs and souls entwined.

The night marches on, kindness spreading thin as their breathing slows, drifting. Neither of them have spoken in a while, both content to just lie there together, the spoken and the unspoken laid out in the space between them, alight. They had the tough conversation earlier; this is simply the aftermath, resigned and savouring what they know is fleeting. 

(Today is infinite, if you believe it is. Richie’s heard something kind of like that, before. He’s pretty sure it was a lie that time, too. 

The wall is beginning to crumble—Eddie’s landed the first blow. It’s up to you and Richie to finish the job, if you’re strong enough.)

“Hey,” Richie says, an hour away from dawn. “Can I show you something?”

He takes Eddie to the edge of town as the sky melts from black to a muddy violet, stars fading overhead. He realizes that he’s never taken Eddie here before when he gives Richie a puzzled look as the car rolls to a stop. 

“What?” he asks sleepily, squinting over as Richie undoes his seatbelt. “The kissing bridge? You could have just kissed me at the—what?” He shakes his head as if trying to ward off sleep, words all jumbled in confusion.

Richie rolls his eyes, more fondly than anything, and gets out of the car without a word, crossing over the other side to grab Eddie’s door. Eddie pouts up at him adorably.

“S’cold,” he whines, hugging his arms into his chest.

“God,” Richie mutters under his breath. He reaches down and clicks off Eddie’s seatbelt then peels off his own jacket and drapes it over him, hoisting him gently up and out of the car by his shoulders. He kisses Eddie quickly, soft and chaste. “There’s something here I wanted to show you.”

He melts into the touch, whining lowly. “Okay.”

Richie leads them over to the fence, just as warped and unsteady as he remembers—pre-remembers, he supposes. Jesus. He’s not sure exactly where his carving is, but his body gravitates right to it anyway, muscle memory working backwards to find the spot he never let himself revisit until now, deadlight-induced visions excluded.

His fingers reach out to touch it right away as he spots it. The wood is not nearly as rough as it was, giving just slightly under the press of his hand. It looks as if it’s reclaiming the spot Richie dug his knife into, the etching not nearly as deep as it was—almost like it’s alive, stitching itself back together like skin, bit by tiny bit as the years have shuffled on. He smiles, remembering the feeling of the knife in his hand and his heart in his throat, threatening to spill out if he didn’t do anything about it. It’s all the more vivid now that the cold, shivery veil of the deadlights has been ripped away. 

Eddie gasps softly and crouches down beside Richie. “Is this what you—did you do this?” he asks, breathless, eyes darting back and forth between the carving and Richie’s smiling face.

“I thought that was kind of obvious.”

“Shut up. When?” He’s looking at Richie now with a mix of disbelief and wonder, mouth hanging open.

Richie slides his thumb over Eddie’s and blushes. “That summer, when we were thirteen,” he says, all embarrassed as if he hadn’t just kissed Eddie two minutes ago.

“Jesus,” Eddie says, “I must have ridden past this like,  _ hundreds  _ of times after that. And I never…  _ Richie.” _ He looks at Richie with the most loving, fond look he’s ever seen, eyes wet and brows furrowed. 

“Come on, Eds,” he says, half laughing, “You think I was kidding earlier when I told you I was in love with you?”

Eddie rolls his eyes like it’s a reflex, the rest of his face not once moving from its enamored look. “No, I just—” He cuts himself off in favour of pulling Richie in for a deep, lingering kiss. Richie melts into it immediately, hand fumbling off the fence post and wrapping around Eddie’s waist, pulling him closer. After a few long, long seconds Eddie finally pulls away with a  _ pop  _ and a loud, forceful exhale.

“I would have told you if I’d seen it,” he says breathlessly, sudden urgency replacing any of his prior sleepiness. “I would have told you,” he repeats, almost apologetic. Richie crumbles at the sound of it. “I would have—and we could have—” 

“I know,” he soothes. And he does, he knows. Eddie wraps his arms around him, burying his face in the crook of Richie’s neck. 

“Thank you for showing me,” he whispers thinly, so lowly Richie wouldn’t have heard it if they weren’t spoken directly into his ear. His heart aches suddenly at the realization that,  _ oh, right, it’s still just today for Eddie.  _ For Eddie, yesterday was the Jade. For Eddie, all of this was shiny and brand new and terrifying for all the reasons it was terrifying for Richie  _ plus  _ some of the ones he forgot about. For Eddie, all of this is happening for the first time. 

This Eddie hasn’t lived through seventy whatever todays. He hasn’t curled up on the couch with Richie and watched movies in the townhouse, or seen Stan, or picked up Bill from jail. He hasn’t gotten to try out dozens of different pick up lines just to see which ones get the best reactions. He hasn’t gotten to tell Richie that he loves him and know, one hundred percent and without a single doubt, that he’d say it back. He hasn’t gotten to take his shot at figuring it out—really figuring it out, without resetting what he knows every day.

No, this Eddie hasn’t done any of that. And chances are, he won’t. But what this Eddie has done is agree to die—barely three hours out of the gate, confused but fucking rolling with it because he loves Richie and his friends _that much—_ which is braver than anything Richie ever could have done in a thousand loops.

“Richie?”

“Hm?”

“Can we watch the sunrise?” They’re nose to nose, now, Eddie looking at him with a quiet, sad sort of adoration as he waits patiently for a response.

Richie blinks, waiting for his brain to catch up with his ears. He tries to remember what he was just so lost in that he couldn’t hear Eddie, but finds that he can’t get the thought back. “Uh,” he says unhelpfully.

But Eddie just smiles, grabbing Richie’s hand and pulling him down the road to the spot where the fence ends and a worn dirt path appears out of the tall grass. He tries to apologize but Eddie shuts him down immediately with a squeeze on his hand, leading him along a familiar route in the grass. 

“I came here once,” Eddie says once they’ve settled on the ground, flattening the long grass underneath them, “the night before I left Derry.” He turns to him with a small smile then puts his head on Richie’s shoulder. 

There’s a beat where Richie thinks he might continue, but he doesn’t. “Yeah?” he prompts, not wanting to pry.

“Yeah, I—” he looks down at his palm and the scar there, flipping Richie’s hand over to compare. “I was afraid I’d forget you, like the others seemed to forget us. I didn’t sleep at all that last night. By like, five? I couldn’t take it anymore so I climbed out my window just like you had all those times.” He lifts his head and gives Richie a knowing look. “Not nearly as hard as you’d made it out to be, by the way.”

“We can’t all be natural born athletes, Eds. I have other gifts.”

Eddie snorts a silent laugh. “Mhmm. Anyway, I—I was halfway to your house before I realized what I was doing. I just… I was scared of what I might tell you, so I came here instead. I didn’t know where else to go.” He gestures vaguely to the space in front of them: a couple bigger rocks for sitting, the bridge in the distance with water streaming below, and long, lush grass everywhere else. “Y’know, I don’t think we ever came back here after we made the oath. At least, not all together.”

Richie can’t recall a time where they had, either. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“I remember, I just sat here—on that rock, actually—and while I waited for the sun to rise I just kept telling myself that we’d all come back, that I’d see you again. I know we talked about visiting each other at college, but I think a part of me knew, even then.”

“That we’d forget?”

He nods sadly, sighing. “Yeah.” 

The sky gradually fades into a dingy sort of white as the first rays of sun peek over the bridge. In the distance, birds keen. It’s not exactly warm, yet, but it’s getting there, skin tingling under the thin sunlight. Richie starts to feel himself drifting in earnest, eyelids heavy and slow, and he knows that they don’t have much longer.

Eddie, his voice small and faraway, knows it too. “Hey Richie?”

“Yeah?”

“When I’m dead—”

“No, Eds, I—”

“Richie, please.” His eyes are closed but the desperation in Eddie’s voice alone is enough to shut him up. Eddie takes in a long, stuttering breath and laces their fingers together tightly. “When I’m dead,” he starts again, “I need you to keep going.”

“Eddie—”

“I mean it, Rich. You can’t just let yourself be miserable and drown in grief for the rest of your life. You have to  _ live. _ If not for you, then for me. If you don’t, I’ll haunt you.”

Richie sniffles. “That sounds kinda hot, actually.”

“Richie.” Eddie scoffs and leans into him like he’s attempting a nudge.

“Fine, I’m sorry.”

“And start writing your own jokes. You’re funny,” he adds, voice breaking on the  _ funny  _ and sending him into a torrent of quiet sobs. Richie holds him tighter and chokes out something like a laugh, something like weeping.

“I’m serious,” Eddie continues, full on hiccuping, “you are. You’re _ so  _ funny, Richie. I’m sorry I always told you you weren’t.”

Richie starts to laugh more than he’s crying, because—he doesn’t know why, but he’s sure there’s a reason, somewhere. “It’s okay,” he assures, delirious. 

Eddie nods furiously, sniffling. His jaw moves where it’s pressed up against Richie’s shoulder as if he’s opening his mouth and closing it, repeatedly, trying to figure out what to say. Richie already knows what he’s thinking:  _ I wish I told you, I wish it was different, I wish we could do it from the start, I wish it didn’t have to end like this, I wish I didn’t have to leave you.  _ There’s a thousand different variations, each and every one already long since lamented in Richie’s mind. Eddie must know this, because instead he settles on the one thing Richie  _ won’t  _ ever wear out:

“I love you, Richie.”

“I love you too, Eds.” 

**Are you ready?**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186158#workskin)**


	37. how am i to face tomorrow after being screwed out of today?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none but like bro it's sad as fuck

“It was like, a vision from the future or some shit. Like the ones you got.” 

Bev nods as if that’s what she was expecting. “Okay, that’s—okay.” 

Off to the side, Eddie rolls his eyes and snorts nervously, like he wants them all to believe he still doesn’t buy this shit.

Richie is tired. He barely resists the urge to send him a glare. “I’m doing this for you, you know,” he says bitterly, adding in an edge of sarcasm just so it’s not mean. Eddie’s face drops almost immediately.

“The fuck is  _ that  _ supposed to mean?”

“It—ugh.” Richie groans and tilts his head back to look at the ceiling for a second or two. When he comes back, they’re all waiting. “It means that the very first time we did this,  _ you  _ were the one that died,” he explains, pointing a finger to Eddie, “so its pretty likely that you’re the whole reason I’m stuck in this thing.”

“But did—didn’t y-y-you say you s-saved him already?” Bill cuts in, brow furrowed. Mike watches him as he says it, then mirrors his expression, both of them turning back to Richie with a frown. 

Richie sighs. “Yeah, that’s—that’s the thing. We’ve all made it out like, dozens of times. So I don’t know.” He feels deflated, already over it. He was  _ so  _ ready for the deadlights to solve everything, but he hasn’t learned anything. 

Bev shifts on the armchair, chewing on her lip nervously. “Okay, what was the vision?”

“Hm?”

“What did you see?”

_Oh._ Richie’s not sure why that’s important, but he goes through it anyway, skipping over the more introspective details—y’know, things that were carved, initials revealing a lifelong devotion, that stuff— and tries not to feel self-conscious when he feels Eddie’s gaze on him, intense and open. The further he gets into it, the more deluded he feels, like something is _wrong._ He spent seventy fucking days trying to figure this shit out just to be rewarded with some pseudo-nostalgic bullshit? What the fuck happened to Bev’s visions, clear cut and informative?

He finishes the story with an exasperated huff and a shrug, eyes darting over to where Eddie is staring at him, face unreadable.

Bev looks like she’s controlling her reaction, face oddly neutral, maybe falling just a little sadder than anything else. An awful feeling starts to creep into Richie’s stomach, like maybe he’s learned a bit more from that vision than he thought, more than he  _ wanted  _ to learn.

Then, she raises her eyebrows carefully. “You said this was where we used to bike? Out on the way to the barrens?”

He frowns, defensive. “Yeah?” She looks down, letting a out a quiet  _ fuck  _ and sighing. Richie crosses his arms. “What? What is it, Bev? Did you—what, did you see that too?” He widens his eyes slightly, like a  _ please don’t tell them if you know what I’m talking about. _

She looks up, glances over to Eddie quickly, then back to Richie. “Were you wearing a grey sweater?” She doesn’t sound like she wants to be right, but judging by the way her face falls at Richie’s reaction, she is.

She looks at him, crumbling. “Oh, honey.”

“You don’t know if that’s what it means,” he says, almost before she finishes. He knows it’s desperate and pathetic, zero to a hundred in under a second. The rest of the losers stay silent, tension holding the room upright. 

“Richie,” Bev says softly, tilting her head all sorry like. He hates the look she’s giving him, wants to go over and carefully peel it off her face, then never think about it again.

It looks like she knows something he wants to pretend he doesn’t.

“Bev,  _ what?” _ He’s not going to entertain it until he hears her say it, point blank. He gives the room a quick once-over to gauge if anyone else is in on her forthcoming truthbomb, but only Eddie seems to have any sort of clue, his eyes now turned toward the floor, squinting in concentration. Richie turns to him, now, taking a step forward. “What is it?”

Bev opens her mouth to speak then, but Eddie beats her to it. 

“I have to die, don’t I?” 

“No,” Richie says at the exact same time as Bev says, “I think you might.”

“Absolutely not,” Richie snaps. “There is no—no. It doesn’t even  _ work,  _ you’ve died like twenty times already. You don’t—Eddie, you don’t have to die.”

He looks up at Richie with a look he’s seen hundreds of times before: before heading down into the cistern, when they found Mike’s bike on the side of the road, when Richie pulled himself out of Eddie’s sheets at dawn on those mornings before school where neither of them could sleep _—_ _ I’m a fraid, but I know I have to do it.  _ That’s what that look says. 

“Eddie,  _ no.” _

“It makes sense,” he says, almost pleading, eyes glassy. Bill lowers his face into his hand. “I died, so that’s what was supposed to happen. But you—you hit a wall and you couldn’t deal with it so you got stuck in this messed up fucking thing.” He sounds like he’s guessing, but Bev looks like she believes him, white as he’s ever seen her, like when Richie repeats her own words back to her verbatim. Eddie softens as Richie looks back and forth between them, panicked.

“I would have been the same, for you. I—” he shakes his head, shutting his eyes tightly. “You went into the deadlights,” he starts again, matter of factly, “and you wanted to see something that would help you break the time loop. You saw yourself alone, after It. In—in a sweater? In my sweater?” He looks to Bev as if for confirmation, then gestures down to the sweater he’s currently wearing, an exact match for the one Richie saw, except in red. He exhales shakily and continues. “ Maybe to break it, you have to let me—let me go, and be alone, like you saw.” 

Bev and Eddie share a look then, and it’s all he needs to know that they’re on the same page. 

Richie shakes his head vigorously. “No, you’re wrong, it’s not—I can’t. You can’t.” 

He feels his throat closing up, trying to chase away any crazy ideas worming their way down from his brain his first. And it’s his first instinct, to run, because of  _ course  _ it is. Denial is built into his blood—he’s been running ever since he was born. He did it when he was a kid, he did it when he was an adult, and he’s done it now, every single today. There’s a part of him, one that maybe wasn’t there at the start of this but is definitely present now, that knows that what Eddie is saying is probably true. It feels wrong, instantly, deep in his bones, which makes him think that it’s most likely  _ right.  _

He just doesn’t want to believe it.

Mike raises a hand. “Guys—”

“Why does it have to be Eddie?” Richie bursts, anger bubbling up inside him. “Why does he have to die? Why did Stan have to die? Or Georgie, or fucking any of them? Why? Who the fuck decided that?”

“Richie—”

“No! Bev, listen. I know you saw what you saw in the deadlights. But maybe that doesn’t—”

“I didn’t see Eddie or Stan, Richie,” she says then, eyes shut tight in frustration. She open them when the room falls silent again, defeated. 

Richie’s hands start to shake. “What?”

Everyone’s looking at her, waiting. She curls in on herself slightly but her voice remains strong, even. “In the deadlights, I saw us at adults. I saw us… here, in the time loops, I guess. And I saw us after that.”

“And?”

And, this is where the other shoe finally drops. “And I didn’t see Stan or Eddie.”

He tries his best to keep his voice level as the anger rushes in again. “I’ve done this seventy times and you never  _ once  _ told me that.”

“That’s because I don’t want to tell you!” she cries, standing. “I don’t want it to be true! Do you think it’s  _ convenient  _ or  _ fun  _ for me to have this thing in me? Do you think getting put in the deadlights was a fuckin’  _ field trip?”  _ She stares at him angrily for a second, chest heaving, then crumbles again. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry. I know—I know you know it isn’t. I’m just—I don’t see what else it could mean.”

Richie feels like an asshole. A desperate, bargaining asshole. 

“Tell me what you saw.”

“What?”

“Every single loop. Let’s compare. Maybe there’s something I haven’t tried yet.”

It’s Bill, this time. “Richie,” he tries, giving him that look again, like he’s fifteen and about to be beeped. 

“You’d do the same, if you could save Georgie,” he says, regretting it immediately. Mike and Ben wince in the background as Bill’s face drops. He stands and walks out of the room without a word, Eddie letting out a weak  _ Bill  _ as Mike goes to follow him. Richie takes a deep breath and turns back to Bev. 

They do end up going through everything she can remember seeing, the two of them sitting knee to knee on the couch locked into the world’s weirdest, most tearfully intense staring contest ever held. It’s a strange, strange back and forth and the others slowly filter out to grab food or coffee or fresh air as they settle into their own little rhythm of it. Eddie paces nervously in the hallway, then disappears to go talk to Bill. Only Ben really lingers, standing in the kitchen pretending to make lunch as Richie and Bev slowly and methodically exhaust their options. 

And exhaust them, they do. After an hour and a half of back and forth, they come to the conclusion that 1) Richie has lived through every single flash of this day that went through Bev’s mind in the deadlights, and 2) Bev also saw them, after It. 

For herself, she saw water. She saw Mike packing up his car and leaving Derry. She saw Bill on the phone, gushing about how proud he was of his new book’s ending. She saw Ben on a boat with a dog. She saw Richie outside, kneeling by a fence, alone.

And that’s all she saw. 

“What about me?”

She frowns, barely there. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what about me? What if I die instead, take his place?” As he says it, he wants it. He wants it  _ bad.  _ “I’m already in fucking hell being trapped in the same day for months on end, why not just finish the job? And then Eddie gets to live, and—and  _ yeah.  _ Why can’t it be me, instead?”

Bev looks helpless. “Richie.” 

_ God,  _ he never wants anyone to say his name ever again. It snaps him out of the world of sacrifices and peace and back into reality as he shrugs at her. “What?” She doesn’t say anything else, just gives him a sad sort of look like she expects him to parse it and figure out exactly what she’s thinking. They used to be able to do that, sometimes. 

“I’m going to bed,” he says, standing up abruptly. The anger has passed through bargaining and now given way to sadness, spreading its way over his skin and wrapping itself around him like a blanket. He doesn’t want to talk to Bev anymore, doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He drags himself up the stairs, ignoring the rest of their friends, and falls into bed face-first.

He wants to disappear. Today—this today,  _ every  _ today—is just one massive fucking mess, and he wants it to be over. He wants to tap out, he’s had enough. He doesn’t care what happens anymore, as long as Eddie gets to be okay. But, as he’s swiftly beginning to realize, that just might not happen by the time tomorrow comes. 

It’s all a sick, sick joke. 

He stays in bed for a while, maybe an hour or two, before the door opens softly, clicking shut a second or two later.

“Rich?” Eddie’s voice floats in softly from the other side of the room. 

Richie lifts a hand from his head in a half-hearted salute. “Hey.”

Eddie gives a little sigh and then there are footsteps making their way around the bed. It dips as he sits down beside Richie and asks, carefully, “What’s up?”

This one might be the least effort he’s ever put into it: “I’m in love with you,” Richie grumbles, not bothering to lift his head from the pillow. 

“Yeah, I—I think I might have known.”

He sits up. Eddie is perched on the edge of the bed, sheepish. 

“Well,  _ that’s  _ new.” 

“What?”

Richie shuffles so that he’s on his side, facing Eddie. He smiles, sadly. “You’ve never said that before,” he tells him, wonder leaking out of his voice. 

“No?”

“No, it’s always ‘I never thought you could love me’ this and ‘I always wanted to tell you’ that,” he mocks, reaching a hand out and grabbing Eddie’s fingers gently. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, taking his hand and pressing it to Richie’s chest to shove him out of the way, scooching himself down into the spot so that they’re lying face to face. 

“Okay, well that’s true,” he says, “I meant, like, this morning. All, uh—” he does a little circling gesture with his hand,  _ “—that.  _ I’d have to be pretty dense not to clue in when someone’s begging to sacrifice their life for mine.” He gives him a pointed look, mischievous little smile playing on his lips, and Richie rolls his eyes.

“Didn’t know you heard that. And besides, I would have done that for any of them,” he says sarcastically.

Eddie nods, serious. “I know you would have. That’s one of the reasons I love you.” He says it so plainly, like it’s a truth as fundamental as the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun—perihelion, aphelion, repeat—and Richie feels himself falling into orbit. 

“I don’t want you to die,” he says, voice cracking halfway through. 

Eddie brings his hand up to Richie’s face and wipes a tear. “And I don’t want  _ you  _ to be stuck in time loop jail forever,” he says, sort of laughing as his eyes fill up with tears to match Richie’s. He speaks again, words splitting wide open. “I’d die if it meant you got to keep going. I would, Richie.” 

The air is thick and dark around them, only a thin frame of light peeking out from behind the curtains. Richie hasn’t spent a lot of afternoons in bed so it still feels a little brand new, but in that sideways, déjà vu kind of way. The same way they’re talking of sacrifices, the same principle but tipped just enough that it warps into something unfamiliar. Richie doesn’t want it.

“I don’t want to keep going if you’re not there to go with me,” he whispers.

Eddie matches his volume. “I don’t know if we get to choose that.”

“Just this morning—many this mornings, for the record—you asked me if I was trying to do a bit. You don’t get to be Mr. Wisdom Of The Universe all of a sudden. I feel like that should be my job.”

Eddie gives a little smile at that. “I think your job right now is denial.”

“More like depression.”

Eddie acknowledges that with no more than a silent exhale, then moves on, clearly not done. “I just think—you saw yourself alone, in the deadlights. That wasn’t random, Richie. I think… you’ve had time to think about and deal with the forgetting, and I think this might have been also time to get ready for—” 

“But you haven’t,” Richie says, breaking again. Eddie pulls him in close to his chest as he shakes, hiccuping through his words.  _ “You  _ haven’t gotten the time to do that. You haven’t gotten the time to do  _ anything,  _ you—” he cuts himself off with a sob and clutches Eddie’s shirt in his hands. It hits him again, the insurmountable loss of it all. Eddie said he’s had time to confront it, but Richie hasn’t gotten over  _ shit.  _ It still hurts just as much as it did on day one, and day ten, and day thirty and forty and fifty. It’s never not going to hurt.

“I know,” Eddie says, no argument left in his voice. “I know. But I… it’s okay.”

The front of Eddie’s shirt is entirely soaked through when Richie pulls away to look at him. “No, it’s not,” he says, like a petulant child through the snot and the tears. 

“No, it’s not,” Eddie echoes, wiping the tears from his face once more. “But I think it’s going to have to be.”

Richie doesn’t have anything to say to that. He doesn’t have any more jokes, and there’s nowhere to run, either. He has the walls of this house and the walls of today, and that’s about it. He has fear, too, but time is starting to fade away as it stretches out in front of him. 

(Just him.)

He thought about that a lot, earlier: constants. For a long time, he thought it was just time—funny, calling it that when this whole ordeal has proved that it’s anything  _ but  _ constant. But for him, right now, today, the past seventy odd todays, it is. He  _ thought  _ it was. He thought: time, and fear. Those were the only two things he could trust to remain, everything else just a variable slipping through his fingers at the slightest change on the wind.

And yes, it is still today, and yes, he’s still fucking scared, but those aren’t the only things he knows are absolute.

He knows that he will love Eddie every day, and that every day, Eddie will love him. This, more so than time or fear or the repeated rise and fall of the sun or the hangover in the morning, is an irrevocable and indisputable fact. It’s constant, thrumming low and steady in his chest at all times. It’s never not been there, and it will never leave, either. It’s simple. Richie Tozier loves Eddie Kaspbrak, and Eddie Kaspbrak loves Richie Tozier. Sure, they can die. They have, and they will. They can die, but this won’t. 

Gravity is a universal constant, after all. Why not love? Is that redundant? Are they not the same thing? The reason the universe exists, matter coalescing until it’s dense enough to spark. Two souls, entwined. These are the same sentences, just different words. Richie would die for Eddie, Eddie would die for Richie. Love will be the thing that saves and destroys them both. This is nothing but a litany.

Later that night, he corners Bill in the upstairs hallway.

“I’m sorry,” he says forcefully, getting right to it as Bill freezes, looking at him with wide eyes. “I was a dick earlier today. It was way out of line and I should never have said it.”

“Oh, uh, thuh-thanks, Rich, I—”

“It’s not your fault,” he continues, watching Bill’s mouth open and shut in front of him, that same guilty look he’s seen a million times. “It’s not,” he repeats, “I know you think it is, but it isn’t. You were a _kid.”_ _Then what’s my excuse?_ his brain asks him, unprompted. Richie shrinks a little bit but stays focused on Bill, his eyes now filling with tears, clearly uncomfortable with all of this.

He realizes now that Bill’s most likely never heard this. Or, at least, not since they were kids. But what kid is going to believe a bunch of other kids telling them something isn’t their fault when their parents are right there telling them the opposite? 

He says it again, just for good measure. “It wasn’t your fault.” Bill finally tears his gaze away, ashamed, and crosses his arms as he looks at the floor with his lips pressed tightly together. 

“I could have gone down in the sewers earlier,” he whispers, “in October, when it happened.”

“You were  _ twelve,”  _ Richie says, grabbing his shoulders. “And It was a fucking alien demon clown. Bill, there’s—there’s nothing you could have  _ done.  _ You already did more than anyone. You—” something inside him starts to falter, his voice going along with it, and Bill looks up. “You did everything, and sometimes that’s still not enough. But it’s not your fault.”

“Richie.” Bill’s lip is quivering dangerously. He pulls Richie into a hug and promptly loses it, entire body shaking against Richie’s as he holds him tight. He gets out a few wheezing attempts at words and Richie shushes him softly.

“It’s okay,” he says, “you don’t—you don’t have to keep blaming yourself. It’s what happened, there wasn’t anything you could’ve done.” He only realizes that he’s crying too when he goes to put his cheek back onto Bill’s shoulder and finds that his shirt is already wet. The words come spilling out of him now, uninhibited. “You’re keeping yourself trapped like this. He wouldn’t want you to be suffering like this, for so long. He won’t hate you if you let go.” He’s speaking in whispers now, hushed and urgent. All of a sudden it all feels so dire, so imperative that Bill understands what he’s saying. After It, when they were kids, Bill never let any of them help him. He wouldn’t talk about it—shut them down every time, flipping back and forth between depression and denial. Richie felt helpless then, but he isn’t now. 

“You have to let yourself move on,” he says, “you have to accept it.” And, well—

_ Oh.  _ That’s _ what they’re really talking about.  _

Bill seems to realize it at the same time Richie does, because he pulls back and says, “It’s not your fault if he dies. If it’s not my fault, then it’s not your fault, either.” It’s not a negotiation, even with the tears still streaming down his face. And Richie has no fight left in him anyway, so he just nods weakly and buries his face back into Bill’s shoulder with an  _ okay.  _

He’s done this with Bill a few times before, but he’s always woken up the next today with no memory of any progress made. Richie thinks that today might be different, that it might stick. Or if not today, perhaps the next one. 

He doesn’t sleep that night. 

They’ve done it maybe a half dozen times before, and it never works—the day simply starts over again as soon as he falls asleep. The longest he’s made it was eleven in the morning, “tomorrow”. A tomorrow that was almost as cruel as the today, because it only stuck around as long as he could keep his eyes open. Just a glimpse into what he seemingly could never have. He’s not reaching for it tonight. He just doesn’t want today to begin again, not just yet.

Moonlight spills onto the sheets, Eddie glowing pale blue beside him. It’s the same scene, and Richie knows the blocking. He doesn’t have to move his eyes off Eddie to know that the curtain is hanging uneven, bunched up to the left so that a thicker strip of light spills in on the right. He never bothers to fix it. He knows that the space underneath the door will light up in four minutes then go dark again in six, because Bill has to use the bathroom. He knows that Eddie’s phone is lying facedown on the night stand, turned off in a private moment of defiance against the gentle, unloving hands that have held him hostage. He knows that the night waits patiently for his surrender.

He watches Eddie, instead.

He’s breathing quietly, eyes downcast but not closed, focused on where he’s holding Richie’s hand with his thumb slowly rubbing circles into his palm. This might be his favourite part—just being with Eddie, in the simplest and most innocent sense of the word. Lying beside him Richie just feels  _ right, _ like this is where he’s supposed to have been all along, the rest of his adult life just a lead-up, unnecessary and unimportant. It’s in this space that he gets to exist, and exist as he should: with Eddie, both legs and souls entwined.

The night marches on, kindness spreading thin as their breathing slows, drifting. Neither of them have spoken in a while, both content to just lie there together, the spoken and the unspoken laid out in the space between them, alight. They had the tough conversation earlier; this is simply the aftermath, resigned and savouring what they know is fleeting. 

(Today is infinite, if you believe it is. Richie’s heard something kind of like that, before. He’s pretty sure it was a lie that time, too. 

The wall is beginning to crumble—Eddie’s landed the first blow. It’s up to you and Richie to finish the job, if you’re strong enough.)

“Hey,” Richie says, an hour away from dawn. “Can I show you something?”

He takes Eddie to the edge of town as the sky melts from black to a muddy violet, stars fading overhead. He realizes that he’s never taken Eddie here before when he gives Richie a puzzled look as the car rolls to a stop. 

“What?” he asks sleepily, squinting over as Richie undoes his seatbelt. “The kissing bridge? You could have just kissed me at the—what?” He shakes his head as if trying to ward off sleep, words all jumbled in confusion.

Richie rolls his eyes, more fondly than anything, and gets out of the car without a word, crossing over the other side to grab Eddie’s door. Eddie pouts up at him adorably.

“S’cold,” he whines, hugging his arms into his chest.

“God,” Richie mutters under his breath. He reaches down and clicks off Eddie’s seatbelt then peels off his own jacket and drapes it over him, hoisting him gently up and out of the car by his shoulders. He kisses Eddie quickly, soft and chaste. “There’s something here I wanted to show you.”

He melts into the touch, whining lowly. “Okay.”

Richie leads them over to the fence, just as warped and unsteady as he remembers—pre-remembers, he supposes. Jesus. He’s not sure exactly where his carving is, but his body gravitates right to it anyway, muscle memory working backwards to find the spot he never let himself revisit until now, deadlight-induced visions excluded.

His fingers reach out to touch it right away as he spots it. The wood is not nearly as rough as it was, giving just slightly under the press of his hand. It looks as if it’s reclaiming the spot Richie dug his knife into, the etching not nearly as deep as it was—almost like it’s alive, stitching itself back together like skin, bit by tiny bit as the years have shuffled on. He smiles, remembering the feeling of the knife in his hand and his heart in his throat, threatening to spill out if he didn’t do anything about it. It’s all the more vivid now that the cold, shivery veil of the deadlights has been ripped away. 

Eddie gasps softly and crouches down beside Richie. “Is this what you—did you do this?” he asks, breathless, eyes darting back and forth between the carving and Richie’s smiling face.

“I thought that was kind of obvious.”

“Shut up. When?” He’s looking at Richie now with a mix of disbelief and wonder, mouth hanging open.

Richie slides his thumb over Eddie’s and blushes. “That summer, when we were thirteen,” he says, all embarrassed as if he hadn’t just kissed Eddie two minutes ago.

“Jesus,” Eddie says, “I must have ridden past this like,  _ hundreds  _ of times after that. And I never…  _ Richie.” _ He looks at Richie with the most loving, fond look he’s ever seen, eyes wet and brows furrowed. 

“Come on, Eds,” he says, half laughing, “You think I was kidding earlier when I told you I was in love with you?”

Eddie rolls his eyes like it’s a reflex, the rest of his face not once moving from its enamored look. “No, I just—” He cuts himself off in favour of pulling Richie in for a deep, lingering kiss. Richie melts into it immediately, hand fumbling off the fence post and wrapping around Eddie’s waist, pulling him closer. After a few long, long seconds Eddie finally pulls away with a  _ pop  _ and a loud, forceful exhale.

“I would have told you if I’d seen it,” he says breathlessly, sudden urgency replacing any of his prior sleepiness. “I would have told you,” he repeats, almost apologetic. Richie crumbles at the sound of it. “I would have—and we could have—” 

“I know,” he soothes. And he does, he knows. Eddie wraps his arms around him, burying his face in the crook of Richie’s neck. 

“Thank you for showing me,” he whispers thinly, so lowly Richie wouldn’t have heard it if they weren’t spoken directly into his ear. His heart aches suddenly at the realization that,  _ oh, right, it’s still just today for Eddie.  _ For Eddie, yesterday was the Jade. For Eddie, all of this was shiny and brand new and terrifying for all the reasons it was terrifying for Richie  _ plus  _ some of the ones he forgot about. For Eddie, all of this is happening for the first time. 

This Eddie hasn’t lived through seventy whatever todays. He hasn’t curled up on the couch with Richie and watched movies in the townhouse, or seen Stan, or picked up Bill from jail. He hasn’t gotten to try out dozens of different pick up lines just to see which ones get the best reactions. He hasn’t gotten to tell Richie that he loves him and know, one hundred percent and without a single doubt, that he’d say it back. He hasn’t gotten to take his shot at figuring it out—really figuring it out, without resetting what he knows every day.

No, this Eddie hasn’t done any of that. And chances are, he won’t. But what this Eddie has done is agree to die—barely three hours out of the gate, confused but fucking rolling with it because he loves Richie and his friends _that much—_ which is braver than anything Richie ever could have done in a thousand loops.

“Richie?”

“Hm?”

“Can we watch the sunrise?” They’re nose to nose, now, Eddie looking at him with a quiet, sad sort of adoration as he waits patiently for a response.

Richie blinks, waiting for his brain to catch up with his ears. He tries to remember what he was just so lost in that he couldn’t hear Eddie, but finds that he can’t get the thought back. “Uh,” he says unhelpfully.

But Eddie just smiles, grabbing Richie’s hand and pulling him down the road to the spot where the fence ends and a worn dirt path appears out of the tall grass. He tries to apologize but Eddie shuts him down immediately with a squeeze on his hand, leading him along a familiar route in the grass. 

“I came here once,” Eddie says once they’ve settled on the ground, flattening the long grass underneath them, “the night before I left Derry.” He turns to him with a small smile then puts his head on Richie’s shoulder. 

There’s a beat where Richie thinks he might continue, but he doesn’t. “Yeah?” he prompts, not wanting to pry.

“Yeah, I—” he looks down at his palm and the scar there, flipping Richie’s hand over to compare. “I was afraid I’d forget you, like the others seemed to forget us. I didn’t sleep at all that last night. By like, five? I couldn’t take it anymore so I climbed out my window just like you had all those times.” He lifts his head and gives Richie a knowing look. “Not nearly as hard as you’d made it out to be, by the way.”

“We can’t all be natural born athletes, Eds. I have other gifts.”

Eddie snorts a silent laugh. “Mhmm. Anyway, I—I was halfway to your house before I realized what I was doing. I just… I was scared of what I might tell you, so I came here instead. I didn’t know where else to go.” He gestures vaguely to the space in front of them: a couple bigger rocks for sitting, the bridge in the distance with water streaming below, and long, lush grass everywhere else. “Y’know, I don’t think we ever came back here after we made the oath. At least, not all together.”

Richie can’t recall a time where they had, either. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“I remember, I just sat here—on that rock, actually—and while I waited for the sun to rise I just kept telling myself that we’d all come back, that I’d see you again. I know we talked about visiting each other at college, but I think a part of me knew, even then.”

“That we’d forget?”

He nods sadly, sighing. “Yeah.” 

The sky gradually fades into a dingy sort of white as the first rays of sun peek over the bridge. In the distance, birds keen. It’s not exactly warm, yet, but it’s getting there, skin tingling under the thin sunlight. Richie starts to feel himself drifting in earnest, eyelids heavy and slow, and he knows that they don’t have much longer.

Eddie, his voice small and faraway, knows it too. “Hey Richie?”

“Yeah?”

“When I’m dead—”

“No, Eds, I—”

“Richie, please.” His eyes are closed but the desperation in Eddie’s voice alone is enough to shut him up. Eddie takes in a long, stuttering breath and laces their fingers together tightly. “When I’m dead,” he starts again, “I need you to keep going.”

“Eddie—”

“I mean it, Rich. You can’t just let yourself be miserable and drown in grief for the rest of your life. You have to  _ live. _ If not for you, then for me. If you don’t, I’ll haunt you.”

Richie sniffles. “That sounds kinda hot, actually.”

“Richie.” Eddie scoffs and leans into him like he’s attempting a nudge.

“Fine, I’m sorry.”

“And start writing your own jokes. You’re funny,” he adds, voice breaking on the  _ funny  _ and sending him into a torrent of quiet sobs. Richie holds him tighter and chokes out something like a laugh, something like weeping.

“I’m serious,” Eddie continues, full on hiccuping, “you are. You’re _ so  _ funny, Richie. I’m sorry I always told you you weren’t.”

Richie starts to laugh more than he’s crying, because—he doesn’t know why, but he’s sure there’s a reason, somewhere. “It’s okay,” he assures, delirious. 

Eddie nods furiously, sniffling. His jaw moves where it’s pressed up against Richie’s shoulder as if he’s opening his mouth and closing it, repeatedly, trying to figure out what to say. Richie already knows what he’s thinking:  _ I wish I told you, I wish it was different, I wish we could do it from the start, I wish it didn’t have to end like this, I wish I didn’t have to leave you.  _ There’s a thousand different variations, each and every one already long since lamented in Richie’s mind. Eddie must know this, because instead he settles on the one thing Richie  _ won’t  _ ever wear out:

“I love you, Richie.”

“I love you too, Eds.” 

**Are you ready?**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186158#workskin)**


	38. ...and, showtime!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

_ Imagine: _

_ Someone’s pulling a gun, and you’re jumping into the middle of it. _

_ You didn’t think you’d feel this way. _

_ There’s a gun in your hand. _

_ It feels hot. It feels oily.  _

_ —Richard Siken, Planet of Love  _

When Richie wakes up (hungover, alone, in his bed, technically yesterday but still today) he doesn’t consider if he is or isn’t strong enough to do what he has to do.

He just does it.

He’s running on autopilot, relying on his subconscious to do the work for him. It’s been nearly three months, now, since the first time he did this and somehow he has to get everything exactly right. (Eddie, sometime last night between dinner and sunrise, looked at Richie and said, as conspiratorially as someone who just offered up their life could sound:  _ you know you have to do everything the same, right?  _ Like it was obvious, like it was the time loop law, like he was sixteen and fresh off another weirdly specific research binge with Ben.

Like he wasn’t telling Richie to let him die in the sewers so that  _ he  _ could live.)

So far, it seems to be going okay. And by okay, Richie means awful—emotionally, psychologically, spiritually—but for all intents and purposes, it’s running pretty damn close to what he remembers going down that first morning. As long as he acts the same, they should too.

He barely registers Eddie visibly gagging over the mention of his nostrils. He feels like he’s watching it all play out on a movie screen, everyone’s lines coming to him just a split second before they’re said. He hears himself explain to them that, no, it was Stanley who poured orange juice down his nostrils that one time. He laughed, in that weird, quiet way he always did. In that weird, quiet way Richie saw him laugh not four days ago, when he just so happened to be alive for one loop, just for funsies. Or torture. Who the fuck knows anymore.

He’s barely there on the walk through town, or in the clubhouse. He plays his part and does his stupid little dance in the corner but it feels forced, robotic. Every word that comes out of his mouth feels fraudulent, and the few seconds of dead air after each sentence is spent waiting for someone to call him out on it. But they never do, so he goes off to go get his token gay token and be tormented once again by It. 

It’s been a hot minute or two since he’s been that up close and personal with that iteration of it, the one that might be able to pass for just a normal clown if you delude yourself enough. And honestly, it’s fucking scary. He didn’t  _ think  _ that any of the fear had faded over the course of the past million todays, but evidently it had at least a little bit, because Richie feels it returning in full force, now. Enough so that he doesn’t have to pretend to want to get out of there—at least for a little bit—when Ben inevitably comes into his room to talk him down. 

He goes for the drive and thinks about Stan because 1) it’s Stan, and 2) if he doesn’t think about Stan, he’ll think about Eddie. And if he thinks about Eddie while no one else is there to keep him on script, this entire day is going to go up in flames. He’s both the dog and the owner on the way to the vet, living in a carefully constructed, spontaneous state of bliss crafted by none other than himself, anxious and glancing back at himself in the rearview mirror every few seconds. He can worry about the consequences of this once they get to the parking lot—for now, he just has to get there.

(He goes for the drive and thinks about Stan.)

He kills Bowers for what he’s pretty sure is somewhere around the sixth or seventh time. Eddie asks him if he’s okay and Richie spends the entire conversation remembering what he was thinking about the  _ first  _ time he had this conversation—he was scared that they could die, all of them, by pretty much anything. And oh, the hindsight on  _ that  _ one. Since then they’ve died in more ways than that earlier Richie could have imagined: head trauma, stabbing, falling, tripping, tasering, car crash, drowning, crushing—oh, and not to mention a fair share of self-inflicted measures, at least on Richie’s part. And still, here they are standing in the library like it’s the first time.

And still, here they are at Neibolt fighting off a mutated Stan that Richie nearly forgot ever existed.

And still, here they are climbing down the well and wading through the sewers.

And still, here they are tossing useless shit into a useless jar.

(Richie wants to make a joke:  _ a token gay, haha!  _ But today doesn’t know he’s gay, so he doesn’t. Hey, maybe he’s made some sort of progress, after all.)

The stage is set for It to appear. Richie’s not sure if it ever mattered, whether he was worthy opponent or not. 

It all unfolds as it did and as it is, splitting them up and throwing them back together again. Eddie grabs Richie’s wrist as they run from the monsters in the closets and he tries to pull himself back into his body, to fucking live inside the moment with Eddie as it may very well be his last, if him and Bev are right—but he can’t hold himself at anything closer than an arm’s length away, either as a safety or a punishment or both. 

He figures it’s the former when he gets caught in the deadlights again, already detached enough to skip out on the cold he remembers so clearly. Which, hey—in general, yes, being outside of your self is a bad thing. But perhaps now, here, where everything that seems good is bad and everything that seems bad is, well, not good, but—maybe it can be? Maybe this can be a sign that he’s doing something  _ right  _ for once and not just a physical response to the panic that’s been growing inside him since yesterday morning. And you know what? Eddie seemed a little farther off in his peripherals this time, so maybe he  _ won’t  _ get caught in the crosshairs this time. The butterfly effect, right? If anyone knows about that it’s Richie: he’s seen— 

Eddie, crouching overtop of him, pure elation.  _ I think I got him, man!  _ There’s a second there where Richie smiles—actually and fully smiles—and allows for a shred of hope to linger on his breath. It certainly  _ seems  _ like it’s different this time, at least a little bit, and if he tried his best to make it the same and this is what happened, then this is what happ—

Before he can finish the thought, there’s a warm spray wetting his face and he’s flinching back and opening his eyes to Eddie, impaled.

“Richie,” he whines, rotten blood seeping over his lips, thick and unforgiving. He looks down at his stomach and then up to Richie, a look so filled with fear and shock and betrayal that it makes Richie want to get up and hit the reset button, preferably with his head and on the side of a giant boulder. That, or to grab Eddie and tell him  _ this was your idea I didn’t want to but you begged me you said you wouldn’t let me do this over and over and over again you wanted me to let this happen but I don’t want it I don’t want it please don’t go— _

But he says none of those things, because Eddie is nothing if not a man who knows his mark. And this part in the scene has him tumbling further down into the cavern, so you best bet that’s where he is, slumped in a heap on the ground where he’s supposed to be. 

And he knows his lines, too.

“I fucked your mom,” he says, choking a wet laugh. Richie tells him he did good, so good. He doesn’t tell him about all the other times he did good, too: fighting It and winning, getting Bowers out of the picture at the townhouse, making Richie’s best todays better and his worst todays bearable, or even just figuring the whole damn thing out. He wants to tell him. He doesn’t.

He wants to tell Eddie he loves him before he goes to finish It off, but he doesn’t do that either.  _ After,  _ he reasons with himself, desperately, as he tears It’s arm out of it’s socket,  _ I’ll tell him when I get back. We’ll crush It’s heart right away and I’ll run to him, fast, just like we used to do. And I’ll tell him, and then he’ll know, and I’ll keep going for him.  _

Remember our old friends, Hope and Deserve? 

Richie’s still on his knees, praying in a chapel that’s been empty since long before today began. This is where that thought drops from where it dangles unfinished, plummeting towards its quiet, lonely end in the sewers where it doesn’t belong. Again, we reprise:

A body and a thought, both dead: is this what’s deserved?

It’s not, but it’s what happens.

This time, the difference is that Richie knows the currents and where they drag him. Nothing else has changed: they leave him, he screams; the house collapses, he caves; they go to the quarry, he breaks. Ad infinitum. But this time, he has a promise—an  _ oath— _ either to break or to keep.

He wants to go back.

But again, if you were paying attention, you already know: it’s not because he wants.

Yes, this time is much of the same. We still have the wall, we still have you, me, and Richie. But this time there is a crack in that wall—tomorrow. The question is this:

Are you going to keep banging your head against it, or will you make this all worth something and crawl through that void?

**Eddie is dead. What would you like to do?**

**>[Try again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59183917#workskin)**

**>[Keep going.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514783/chapters/59186188#workskin)**


	39. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: none

Richie wakes up late that morning, with a clear head and a pair of broken glasses on the nightstand. 

_It’s over,_ something whispers, small and broken. It might be him, it might be you. Maybe it’s even me. _It’s over._ The sun shines in full force behind the sheer curtains, a warm and sickly reminder that there is a world on the other side of that wall, one without Eddie. 

His feet drag across the floor to the tune of Eddie’s voice echoing in his ear. _I need you to keep going._ It is for that reason and that reason alone that Richie is able to place his body in the shower, unreal and numb except for the intermittent seizing of his chest, convulsing with grief as flashes of todays past come to him, unprovoked. If he were less screaming white static he might feel failure seeping in, but Eddie’s voice comes back to him each time he rests his head against the cool tile of the shower walls: _it’s the only way._

He knows it’s true, deep down. It makes sense because it doesn’t, just like everything with It. In some internal, deeply subconscious way, it tracks. And he wants to be angry—he _is_ angry, distantly, in that far-off, grief-stricken sort of way as he lets the water run cold over his shoulders—but didn’t he do that already? Was this whole thing nothing but a chance to do that? To do all of it? He never did decide one way or the other, if it was a punishment or a gift, a chance to process what happened (what was always going to happen) before he had to keep going. Did the universe see that he wouldn’t make it out on the other side and look kindly upon him, giving him not the chance to change it but to accept it? 

_Eddie would like that answer,_ he thinks. There’s a smile ghosting on his lips as the thought comes to him. He’d like anything that spun this in a way that made it so his friends could be okay. That’s the thing about Eddie—he’s not so much a man as a promise, an oath to love without end that just so happens to be in the shape of a person. He is a lover in most every sense of the word, fierce and unrelenting. He loves his friends like it’s breathing, deeming them worthy not because they are but because it’s simply in his nature to do so. Worthy of being scared for, hoping for, living for. Or, and you know how this one goes:

Maybe worth dying for too, if that’s what has to be.

And now, our little trio—this sweet affair that’s almost reached its end—knows that that’s what has to be.

The kitchen is filled with love and light when Richie comes downstairs and collapses into the arms of his remaining friends. 

It’s bright, the first time Richie’s ever seen the curtains fully open in this place. Ben and Bev are standing hip to hip at the stove, flipping something that smells amazing. Mike and Bill are caught up in some quiet discussion, both of them smiling sadly over the rims of their coffee mugs, gently leaning against the counter. They’re all moving slowly. A haze of shock and bittersweet victory thickens the air and Richie realizes, from his spot at the bottom of the stairs—still unseen, just a spectator to this melancholy tableau—that the sweater hugging Bill’s shoulders isn’t his, but Eddie’s. 

“Guys?” His voice comes out ragged and everyone turns to look at him, faces dropping into four identical frowns almost immediately. Richie sniffles thickly and asks, “Is it over?” 

Bev drops her spatula on the counter and rushes over, holding her arms out to him. “Oh, honey.”

And it’s not like he was still clinging to any sort of delusion or hope that he might wake up tod _—yesterday—_ and have to find a different way to break the loop, but hearing Bev nod into his shoulder and whisper _it’s over_ really is the last push he needs to face the truth:

Eddie is dead, and he’s not coming back. 

The others wrap themselves around Richie as he weeps, holding him up. They don’t know what they mean when they tell him it’s over, and they might never—does he tell them? Does he clue them in on the fact that there’s nearly a hundred other versions of them that never made it this far? That there were yesterdays where Eddie lived, but not one where Richie could figure out how to bring him into tomorrow? Or does he keep it inside and spare them the extra grief? He can’t imagine a scenario in which he tells them and doesn’t hurt them in the process. 

A right to know, a right not to know. Richie has no idea which one. It’s his thing, sure, but isn’t it theirs, too? He sits at the counter and eats his eggs without tasting them, and excuses himself halfway through the meal to throw up when he remembers the day he and Eddie spent twenty minutes arguing whether it was evil or not to put ketchup on your eggs.

He doesn’t tell them. Maybe someday he will. He’s not sure. He sits on Eddie’s bed (made perfectly, corners tucked in) and stares at the open suitcase, willing it to give him an answer. He’d like to be told what to do, please.

(We’ll let him make that choice himself. Your work is done here.)

It’s over.

The day before they leave Derry, Richie drives back to the kissing bridge and, for the last time, etches over the letters he carved there years ago. He’s kneeling in the dirt like it’s a grave, and the breeze is lovely. He wishes it wasn’t. 

He hugs Eddie’s sweater across his chest and stares at the fence for a long while, thinking about all the others. Something Bev said once, along the lines of _what happens to the versions of us that don’t wake up today?_ He wonders if there are versions of Eddie that are kneeling with Richie in a different here and now. Or maybe versions of Eddie that are still at the townhouse, alone, clutching to Richie’s shirts like a rosary and muttering apologies for making fun of them, all those years. Maybe there’s a tomorrow—today, now, jesus—where It is luring out it’s next victim, unsatisfied with the seven lives it took so long to claim. Maybe, maybe not.

All he has, he’s realizing, is today. This today, this tomorrow, this plank of wood, this broken heart. There’s nothing else, at least not for him. 

But that doesn’t mean he can’t take a minute—or two, or thirty, or as many as he needs until Ben drives by and spots him on the side of the road—to sit on the ground and let the multitudes wash over him, the beginning of an eternal tide that will ebb and flow through him until this version of him kicks it for real, drowning or drying out. He lets it hit him, aching and bent over in the dirt as he mourns for the ones that didn’t make it, and smiles for the ones that did.

And so, once again at the end of all things, here’s the deal: Eddie is dead. Maybe he was always going to be dead. This seems to have been inevitable. 

Evidently, inevitable doesn’t give a fuck about Richie, either.

He can’t accept Eddie dying. He doesn’t want to. He really, really doesn’t want to—but he’s going to have to try. If not for himself, for Eddie. He thinks that might be enough—the thought that he’s doing it for Eddie, the rest of his life a tribute to spite or love or both, which really is so appropriate now that he thinks about it—to get him through how many ever days he has left on this Earth, repeat or otherwise. He’ll do it for Eddie until he can do it for himself, if he can ever do it for himself. He’s not sure if that’s going to happen, but he can take it one today at a time. That’s what’s supposed to happen, right? You feel awful all the time until one day you suddenly realize you feel slightly less awful? He has to believe that that’s true. He no longer has the luxury of choice, in that matter.

He can already see himself teetering awkwardly into his new life, irrevocably changed. And a lot of it will be good—he has plenty to look forward to, like trips to the east coast and weekend brunches with Bill and holidays spent with more company than just the silence of his apartment, year after year. He won’t be alone anymore. He’s never been alone, not really, but he knows that now, after Derry, his head will once again match his heart, tethered. He can see himself holding onto his friends, their love tugging at his ribs and reminding him to breathe. It’s all any of them can do after this, right? All any of them can hope for? He can see himself going to bed, each night bringing with the promise of starlight, the quiet and immense victory of making it through another day, no matter how empty or perilous or mournful. _Tomorrow,_ he’ll tell himself. _Maybe tomorrow will be better._

And if not tomorrow, perhaps the day after.

**Author's Note:**

> you did it!!!!! im proud of you. this is the only way it could have ended. thanks for helping richie on his journey, he couldn’t have done it without you. and neither could i—thank you so much for being here. im glad we made it to the end together. i would LOVE to hear yall's thoughts in the comments (what choices did u make! what chapters made u wanna kill me! how did u think it was gonna end! when did u figure out this was what had to happen!) or if you'd like you can come yell with me on [tumblr](https://losersclub3000.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/losersclub3000)!!


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